Week 2 English II Practice Assignment

To identify the adverb(s) in the sentence ‘I woke up early today.’, we refer to the definition and types of adverbs provided in the sources.

An adverb is defined as “a word, or a set of words, that modifies verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs”. Adverbs “expresses when, where and how an action is performed or indicates the quality of degree of the action”. They “add to or modify, or give us additional information about verbs”. Adverbs often function as adjuncts, which are “optional elements” that provide “additional information” and can be removed without structurally affecting the sentence.

Let’s analyse each word in question:

1. ’early’:

   • This word modifies the verb ‘woke up’ by telling when the action occurred.
   • It fits the category of adverbs of time or frequency, which answer questions like “when” or “how often”.
   • For example, ‘yesterday’ is given as an adverb of time.
   • Removing ’early’ still leaves a grammatically complete sentence: ‘I woke up today.’ This confirms its function as an optional adjunct.
   • Therefore, ’early’ is an adverb.

2. ’today’:

   • This word also modifies the verb ‘woke up’ by telling when the action occurred.
   • It falls under the category of adverbs of time or frequency.
   • Removing ’today’ still leaves a grammatically complete sentence: ‘I woke up early.’ This confirms its function as an optional adjunct.
   • Therefore, ’today’ is an adverb.

3. ‘up’:

   • In the phrase ‘woke up’, ‘up’ is part of a phrasal verb. While ‘up’ can function as an adverb of place or direction in other contexts (e.g., “The balloon went up”), within a phrasal verb like ‘wake up’, it’s often considered a particle that forms an integral part of the verb’s meaning. The sources mention ‘get up’ (meaning ‘get out of bed’) and ‘wake up’ (meaning ‘stop sleeping’) as phrasal verbs [114, Appendix 6]. While its function is adverbial in nature, modifying the verb’s direction or completeness, it is tightly bound to the verb ‘woke’ to create a specific meaning of ‘awakening’.
   • The classification of adverbs includes “adverbs of place or direction” which talk “about where or in what direction”, and “upstairs” is given as an example of such an adverb. However, ‘up’ on its own is not explicitly listed as a standalone example for this category in the same way ‘yesterday’ is for time adverbs.

Given the options, both ’early’ and ’today’ clearly and unambiguously function as adverbs of time, modifying the verb ‘woke up’ by providing information about when the action took place.

Thus, the sentence has two adverbs: ’early’ and ’today’.

The final answer is $\boxed{D}$

Adverbs of time provide information about when an action is performed. They are part of a generic classification of adverbs that also includes adverbs of manner (how), adverbs of degree (how much), and adverbs of place or direction (where or in what direction).

More specifically, the sources state:

• “Another category is adverbs of time or frequency. So, when the time and how often the frequency”.
• Similarly, it is noted that adverbs of time or frequency answer questions like “when how often”. They “talk about the timing and the frequency of the action, how often the action is being performed”.

While the category is often referred to as “adverbs of time or frequency,” and “how often” relates to frequency, the question specifically asks about adverbs of time. Therefore, the most direct answer for adverbs of time is when.

The final answer is $\boxed{B}$

Based on the information provided in the sources, ’thoroughly’ is an adverb of b) Degree.

Adverbs of degree indicate the amount or intensity of an action or quality, answering the question “how much?”. The sources offer the following explanation and example:

• Definition: Adverbs of degree “explain or indicate or express the amount or the amount of force, which is being performed, how much?”. They answer questions such as “how much is the action performed?”.
• Example with ’thoroughly’: In the sentence “The policemen examine the document thoroughly,” the word ’thoroughly’ is identified as an adverb that “adds to the examination of the document by police” and indicates “the degree how much”.
• Common Adverbs of Degree: Other common adverbs of degree include ‘completely’, ’nearly’, ’entirely’, ’less’, ‘mildly’, ‘most’, ‘somewhat’, ’excessively’, and ‘much’.

Therefore, ’thoroughly’ fits the description of an adverb of degree as it specifies the extent to which an action is performed.

Adverbs of degree answer the question d) How much.

Here’s a detailed explanation from the sources:

• An adverb generally “expresses when, where and how an action is performed or indicates the quality of degree of the action”. They “add to or modify, or give us additional information about verbs”.
• Specifically, adverbs of degree “explain or indicate or express the amount or the amount of force, which is being performed”. They tell us “how much” an action is performed.
• For instance, in the sentence “The policemen examine the document thoroughly,” ’thoroughly’ is an adverb that indicates the “degree how much” the action of examining is performed.
• Common adverbs of degree include ‘completely’, ’nearly’, ’entirely’, ’less’, ‘mildly’, ‘most’, ‘somewhat’, ’excessively’, and ‘much’. These words provide information about the extent or degree of something.

The sentence ‘In four years, I will have finished college and obtained my degree’ is in the Future Perfect tense.

Here’s why:

• Understanding Tenses and Aspects: The sources explain that verbs denote actions and events, and that tense codes information about the time of an action, while aspect describes the state of that event. English has three tenses: present, past, and future, and four aspects: habitual (or indefinite), continuous (or progressive), perfective (or perfect), and perfect continuous.

• Identifying the Structure: The sentence contains the structure “will have finished” and “obtained” (implying “will have obtained”). This structure, ‘will have’ + past participle, is characteristic of the Future Perfect tense.

• Explanation of Future Perfect: The sources describe the Future Perfect (also called ‘perfective’ aspect) as indicating a “state of an event which is complete, it is perfected”. When discussing this aspect in the future tense, an example given is “‘I will have typed a mail’,” which is described as “Talking about having this, talking about this state of perfection in future time”. This perfectly matches the meaning of the given sentence, as finishing college and obtaining a degree are actions that will be completed by a specific point in the future (“in four years”).

• Eliminating Other Options:

  • Future Indefinite: This aspect is marked by ‘will’ + the base form of the verb (e.g., ‘I will go home now’). This does not match the sentence structure.
  • Future Continuous: This aspect is marked by ‘will be’ + ‘-ing’ (e.g., ‘Girls will be playing in the ground’). This does not match the sentence structure.
  • Future Perfect Continuous: This is a more complex aspect marked by ‘will have been’ + ‘-ing’ (e.g., ‘will have been playing nicely’, ‘shall have been typing a mail’). This does not match the sentence structure.

Therefore, based on the verb form and its function to describe an action completed by a future time, the sentence is in the Future Perfect tense.

The passive form of a sentence is constructed by transforming the object of the active sentence into the subject, and using a form of the verb ‘be’ followed by the past participle of the main verb. The original subject (the agent) is either suppressed or moved into a prepositional phrase with ‘by’. The tense of the original verb is retained in the ‘be’ verb of the passive construction.

Let’s break down the transformation of the sentence “They had already informed Sarah”:

1. Identify the components of the active sentence:

   • Subject (Agent): ‘They’.
   • Verb Phrase: ‘had informed’ (This is in the Past Perfect tense). ‘Already’ is an adverb modifying the verb.
   • Object (Receiver of action): ‘Sarah’.

2. Transform to passive voice:

   • The object ‘Sarah’ becomes the new subject of the passive sentence.
   • The verb ‘had informed’ needs to be converted to its passive form. The passive structure requires ‘be’ + past participle (V3). To maintain the Past Perfect tense, ‘be’ must also be in the past perfect form, which is ‘had been’ [Appendix 1.1].
   • The past participle of ‘inform’ is ‘informed’ [Appendix 2].
   • Combining these, the passive verb phrase becomes ‘had been informed’ [Appendix 1.1].
   • The adverb ‘already’ is typically placed between the auxiliary verb ‘had’ and ‘been’ in this construction.

3. Construct the passive sentence:

   • Sarah (new subject) had already been informed.
   • The original agent ‘They’ can be omitted as it’s often suppressed in passive voice when not important or unknown.

Now let’s evaluate the given options:

• a) Sarah has already been informed: This uses ‘has been informed’, which is Present Perfect Passive [22B, Appendix 1.1]. The original sentence was Past Perfect, so the tense is incorrect.
• b) Sarah have already been informed: This uses ‘have been informed’. It’s Present Perfect Passive, but ‘have’ is incorrect for the singular subject ‘Sarah’ (it should be ‘has’ for singular subjects in Present Perfect). Both tense and subject-verb agreement are incorrect.
• c) Sarah had already been informed: This uses ‘had been informed’, which correctly represents the Past Perfect Passive tense [Appendix 1.1]. This matches our derivation.
• d) Sarah had already informed: This sentence is still in the active voice, with ‘Sarah’ as the subject and ‘had informed’ as the active verb. It has not been converted to passive voice.

Therefore, the correct passive form is c) Sarah had already been informed.

The final answer is $\boxed{C}$

Let’s analyze each sentence to determine if an attributive adjective is being used with a degree adverb, drawing on the information from the sources.

First, let’s define the key terms:

• An attributive adjective is an adjective that precedes a noun and modifies it. It attributes certain information to the following noun. Examples include “a wonderful proposal” or “an honest person”.
• A degree adverb is a word that provides information about the extent or degree of something. It modifies verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs, answering the question “how much?”. Common examples include ’extremely’, ‘absolutely’, ‘very’, ‘completely’, ’nearly’, ’entirely’, ‘much’, etc..

Now, let’s examine each option:

a) She was extremely happy.

• The word “happy” is an adjective.
• The word “extremely” is a degree adverb, modifying ‘happy’ to indicate the extent of happiness.
• However, in this sentence, ‘happy’ follows the verb “was” (a form of ‘be’). Adjectives that follow the verb in the predicate but still modify the subject noun are called predicative adjectives.
• Therefore, this sentence uses a degree adverb with a predicative adjective, not an attributive adjective.

b) She had an absolutely wonderful day.

• The noun being modified is “day”.
• The word “wonderful” is an adjective that precedes the noun “day”, making it an attributive adjective. It describes the quality of the day.
• The word “absolutely” is a degree adverb, modifying the adjective ‘wonderful’ by indicating the intensity of ‘wonderful’.
• The structure of this phrase, “an absolutely wonderful day,” aligns with the explanation that a degree adverb can appear before an adjective which then precedes a noun, as seen in examples like “an extremely cold day” or “an absolutely cold day”.
• Therefore, this sentence correctly uses an attributive adjective (“wonderful”) with a degree adverb (“absolutely”).

c) She was very confused.

• The word “confused” is an adjective (a participle adjective that functions as an adjective).
• The word “very” is a degree adverb, modifying ‘confused’ to indicate the intensity.
• Similar to option (a), ‘confused’ follows the verb “was”. This structure means ‘confused’ is functioning as a predicative adjective.
• Therefore, this sentence also uses a degree adverb with a predicative adjective, not an attributive adjective.

Based on the analysis, only sentence (b) uses an attributive adjective with a degree adverb.

The final answer is $\boxed{B}$

Both ‘Clearly’ and ‘Obviously’ are suitable adverbs to fill in the blank in the sentence, as they both function as comment adverbs.

Here’s why:

• Comment adverbs are a type of adverb that indicates likelihood, or express the speaker’s attitude or opinion.
• The sources explicitly list ‘clearly’ and ‘obviously’ as examples of comment adverbs that indicate likelihood.
• These adverbs can modify the entire sentence, conveying the speaker’s point of view or attitude towards the statement.
• Comment adverbs have flexible placement and can occur at the initial position, in the middle of the sentence, or even at the end.
• In the sentence ‘Ruth _______ has no idea as to what is happening,’ both ‘clearly’ and ‘obviously’ would convey the speaker’s assessment or strong belief about Ruth’s lack of understanding.

Therefore, both options (a) and (b) are correct.

The sentence ‘Apparently, you have to submit the forms both as soft copies and as hard copies’ uses a comment adverb indicating c) Likelihood.

The sources explain that comment adverbs are a type of adverb that indicates likelihood or expresses the speaker’s attitude or opinion. The word ‘apparently’ is specifically listed as an example of a comment adverb that indicates likelihood.

These adverbs, which are also referred to as sentence adverbs, take the entire sentence into their scope and modify the entire sentence, often appearing at the beginning. In this sentence, ‘apparently’ conveys the speaker’s assessment of the probability or likely truth of the statement, rather than a personal judgment or strong opinion.

In the sentence ‘The food was too tasty,’ the word ‘too’ denotes c) The taste is more than required.

Based on the sources, ’too’ is a degree adverb. When used before an adjective or another adverb, ’too’ indicates a degree that is more than enough, or more than what is wanted or needed. It suggests an excessive amount.

For example, the phrase “too hot” implies “unbearably hot”, and “too loud” means “louder than I want”. Similarly, “too much sugar” means “more sugar than I want”. Therefore, “too tasty” signifies that the taste was in an amount exceeding what was desirable or appropriate.