C O N TE M P OR A R Y E N GLI S H GR A M M A R
I. MORPHOLOGY
1. Aspect in English (the two grammatical aspects: perfective & imperfective)
a. Draw a parallel between perfective and imperfective aspect in English
2. Tenses:
a. The simple present tense (form, definition, uses and examples)
b. The present continuous (form, definition, uses, verbs that combine with it, change of
verb meanings, examples)
c. Past simple and past continuous (forms, definition, uses, examples)
d. Present perfect (form, definition, theories, uses, examples)
e. Draw a parallel between the present perfect and past simple
f. Means of expressing future in English (present simple, present continuous, to be going
to, future simple, future continuous, future perfect: forms, uses and examples)
3. Mood and modality in English:
a. Mood and modality in English, a general presentation (grammatical moods in English,
ways of expressing modality, modal verbs, subjunctive mood)
b. Modal verbs, general presenation (types of modal verbs – central, peripheral, quasimodals – epistemic vs. root meaning, morphosyntactic properties of modal verbs)
c. Draw a parallel between the modal verbs CAN and MAY
d. The modal verb MUST
e. The modals SHALL/WILL
f. The subjunctive mood (indicative vs. Subjunctive, forms, distribution – fake
independent clauses, THAT clauses, Adverbial clauses)
4. Voice in English:
a. The passive voice in English (morphological properties of the verb, argument
structure, omission of by-phrase, uses, verbs of reporting, DOC, get-passive,
causative)
5. The article in English (Definite, indefinite, zero articles, uses – specific, generic reference,
other uses – forms, examples)
II. SYNTAX OF SIMPLE SENTENCES
1. Briefly define and illustrate with an example the following term: simple (independent)
sentence
2. The Principle of Endocentricity
3. Mention three properties of lexical categories
4. Mention three properties of functional categories
5. The classification of determiners according to their c-selectional properties
6. Explain the phenomenon of Subject Movement
7. Provide the definition of the term Small Clause, and illustrate it with an example
8. The classification of auxiliary verbs according to their initial position occupied in the
structure of the sentence
9. Name three circumstances in which the passivization of a transitive verb does not normally
occur.
10. Briefly define and illustrate the following term: adjective-like quantifier
11. Briefly define and illustrate the following term: determiner-like quantifier
12. Name five contexts in which the ’s-Genitive is preferred to the of-Genitive
III. SYNTAX OF COMPLEX SENTENCES
1. The complex sentence: definition, structure, types
2. Types of subordinate clauses (criteria of classification)
3. Types of complement clauses
4. Extraposition and IT-insertion in THAT-clauses (definition, examples)
5. Topicalization in THAT-clauses (definition, examples)
6. Sequence of tenses (types, examples)
7. PRO-TO constructions (definition, logical subject, examples)
8. FOR-TO constructions (definition, logical subject, examples)
9. Accusative + Infinitive constructions (definition, logical subject, examples)
10. Nominative + Infinitive constructions (definition, logical subject, examples)
11. Differences between participles and gerunds
12. Causative verbs with infinitive and participial constructions
13. Verbs of physical perception with infinitive and participial constructions
14. Full gerunds and half gerunds (definition, examples)
IV. LEXICOLOGY
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Affixation – definition, examples
Composition – definition, examples
Conversion – definition, examples
Clipping – definition, examples
Blending – definition, examples
Abbreviation – definition, examples
Less productive WFRs (reduplication, deliberate coinages, eponymous words) – definition,
examples
V. PRAGMATICS
1. Grice’s definition of Speaker’s Meaning
2. Difference between constative and performative utterances
3. Explicit and implicit performatives
4. Felicity conditions
5. Grammatical characteristics of performatives
6. Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (examples)
7. Representative Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
8. Directive Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
9. Commissive Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
10. Expressive Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
11. Declarative Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
12. Inference and implicature
13. The cooperative principle
14. Conversational maxims (types, examples)
15. Indirect Speech Acts (definition, examples)
E N G LI S H A N D A M E R I C A N LI TE R A T UR E
I. EXPLANATION AND EXEMPLIFICATION OF LITERARY TERMS:
a.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Poetry
ballad
ode
sonnet
epic poem, lyrical
poem
5. pastoral
6. elegy
7. heroic epic
8. mock heroic epic
9. dramatic monologue
10. alliteration
11. simile
12. metaphor
13. conceit
14. hyperbole
15. metonymy
16. personification
17. synesthesia
18. ekphrasis
19. terza rima
20. blank verse. heroic
couplet
21. haiku
22. free verse
b. Fiction
23. plot
24. detective story
25. framed narrative
26. sentimental novel
27. Gothic novel
28. utopia, dystopia
29. round/dynamic and
flat/static characters
30. reliable and
unreliable narrator
31. telling and showing
in characterisation
32. omniscient narrator
33. open ominiscience
34. free indirect speech
35. first person
narration
36. epistolary novel
37. multiple narrative
38. antinovel
39. cliff-hanger
technique
40. serialised
publication
41. Bildungsroman
42. historical romance
43. epiphany
44. stream of
consciousness
45. law mimetic style
46. flashback
47. chiaroscuro
c. Drama
48. comedy
49. tragedy
50. tragicomedy
51. comedy of manners
52. fourth wall illusion
53. verse drama, poetic
drama
54. tragic flaw
d. Ages and Literary
Trends/Movements
55. Renaissance
56. Metaphisical poetry
57. Mannerism
58. Baroque
59. Neo-Classicim
60. Romanticism
61. Transcendentalism
62. Realism
63. Victorianism
64. Pre-Raphaelitism
65. Aestheticism
66. Naturalism
67. Modernism
68. Imagism
69. Lost Generation
70. Postmodernism
e. Literary Theory
71. New Criticism
72. structuralism
73. reader-response
theory
74. hermeneutics
75. postcolonial theory
76. deconstruction
f. Other Literary Terms
77. irony
78. satire
79. absurd
80. off-Broadway
81. intertextuality
82. metatextuality
83. collage
84. literary essay
85. literary canon
86. allegory
87. symbol
88. melodrama
89. psychological
reading
90. Doppelgänger
II. TEXT FRAGMENT ANALYSIS IN ESSAY FORM FROM LITERARY WORKS
INCLUDED IN THE LIST BELOW:
English literature
1. William Shakespeare: Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The
Tempest
2. Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
3. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
4. Henry Fielding: Tom Jones
5. Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy
6. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
7. William Blake: The Lamb, The Tyger
8. P.B. Shelley: Ode to the West Wind
9. John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn
10. Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe
11. Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
12. W.M. Thackeray: Vanity Fair
13. Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
14. Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights
15. Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d’Urbervilles
16. Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
17. James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
18. Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
19. Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
20. E.M. Forster: A Passage to India
21. Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
22. William Golding: Lord of the Flies
American literature
1. Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown, The Scarlet Letter
3. Herman Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener
4. Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage
5. Henry James: Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw
6. Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
7. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
8. William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury, Sanctuary
9. Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five
10. Jack Kerouac: On the Road
11. J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
12. Eugene O’Neill: The Emperor Jones, Long Day’s Journey into Night
13. Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
14. Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman
15. Edward Albee: Peter and Jerry, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
16. Sam Shepard: True West, The God of Hell
17. Walt Whitman: O Captain, My Captain, Song of Myself
18. Emily Dickinson: Poems
19. Robert Frost: Poems
20. Wallace Stevens: Poems
21. Sylvia Plath: Poems
22. Ezra Pound: Poems
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1. Abrams, M.H., Greenblatt, Stephen (eds.). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. I-II.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.
2. Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
3. Bollobás Enikő. Az amerikai irodalom története. Budapest: Osiris, 2005.
4. Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin
Books, 1999.
5. Delaney, Denis et al. Fields of Vision. Literature in the English Language, London: Longman, 2003.
6. Pieldner Judit: Genres in Changing Contexts. An Introduction to the Study of English Literature
from the Beginnings to Romanticism. Miercurea Ciuc: Status, 2010.
7. Prohászka-Rád Boróka. Notes on Fiction. Miercurea Ciuc: Status, 2006.
8. Virágos Zsolt. Portraits and Landmarks. The American Literary Culture in the 19th Century.
Debrecen: U of Debrecen P, 2003.
9. Virágos Zsolt. The Modernists and Others. The American Literary Culture in the Age of the
Modernist Revolution. Debrecen: U of Debrecen P, 2008.