MOCK TEST 1 UNITS 1, 2, 3, 4

1. Which of the following is NOT a way to consider a clause in

systemic functional grammar?
a) the linguistic representation of our experience of the world
b) a communicative Exchange between persons
c) an organised message or text
d) a structure of syntactic processes and participants. *

The clause is the most important grammatical unit; it allows us

to organise our experience semantically and syntactically according
to certain patterns (regularities).
With each type of clause, we express different communicative
functions (“speech acts”), grammatically represented by types of
clauses, each typically encoding one kind of mood.

2. What is “for Mary’s birthday” in “Peter bought a bunch of

flowers for Mary’s birthday”.
a) Indirect object
b) Prepositional object
c) Adjunct *
d) Goal

Adjuncts can be added to any clause structure, there can be

more than one in a clause and can typically appear in several
positions. “Semantically, they represent circumstances and
comments” on the verb or the clause. (Module 8.1).
One special kind of Adjunct is obligatory and called Locative or
Goal and required by a few verbs. (Module 4.2.1)
Here, “for Mary’ s birthday” talks about the occasion, rather
than the person receiving the bunch of flowers, and can appear
with other adjuncts such as “yesterday” or “in a shop”. It
cannot be Goal since the sentence would not sound incomplete
without this Adjunct.

3. What type of clause is “can you?”:

a) an indirect question.
b) a verbless clause.
c) an abbreviated clause. *
d) a direct declarative question.

“can you” is a question tag, namely, it is not independent, but

requires a response, which consists of a yes/no question
containing an operator + a pronoun. The operator can be either
positive or negative. (Module 23.8)
In this case, we could imagine a sentence such as “You can’ t
finish that exercise in time, can you?” in which depending on
intonation we could expect a negative answer or no answer at
all.
 4. What is necessary in English to ask a question and negate a
clause?:
a) a predicate
b) a finite operator *
c) a process
d) an action

A finite operator is a primary or modal verb or ‘do’. Primary

verbs are the ‘be’ and ‘have’ and their inflected forms whether
they are positive or negative, modal verbs are ‘CAN, COULD, WILL,
WOULD, SHALL, SHOULD, MAY, MIGHT, OUGHT’ and their negative
counterparts. ‘do’ can have positive and negative forms ‘do, don’
t, does, doesn't, did and didn't’. There are also ‘lexical-auxiliary
verbs’ consisting in one of the primary verbs + another element
and a couple of semi-modals (‘dare’ and ‘need’) which only
function as operators sometimes.
English is special in that every time we utter a question or
negation we need one of these operators.

5. Which of the following is an assertive word?:

a) still *
b) yet
c) ever
d) any

Because standard English does not allow double negation,

after the first negative word all other similar items must be
“non-assertive” (such as “any” and its compounds, yet, ever,
etc.). These words are not negative, but have non-factual
meanings (potentiality, non-fulfilment), typical of negations and
questions, as well as conditional and comparative clauses,
“hardly” and “without” .
On the contrary, assertive items are factual in meaning.
Among the ones with non-factual counterparts we have ‘still’,
‘already’, ‘a lot’ and ‘some’ and its compounds. (Module 3.5)

6. Which of the following transitive verbs don’t passivize?:

a) some common verbs which take untypical direct objects. *
b) all transitive verbs passivize.
c) some common verbs with clausal direct objects.
d) transitive verbs never passivize.

Verbs such as ‘have’, ‘cost’, ‘lack’, ‘fit’, ‘suit’, ‘weigh’, ‘contain’,

‘measure’ have ‘untypical direct objects’ and do not passivize,
even though their Ods pass the wh-cleft test. (Module 6.1.2)
Ex: That suitcase costs ninety pounds. (What that suitcase
costs in ninety pounds): no passive counterpart can be thought
of.
 6. What do phrasal-prepositional verbs consist of?:
a) a lexical verb followed by a prepositional phrase.
b) a lexical verb followed by a phrase and a preposition.
c) a lexical verb followed by an adverbial particle and a
preposition. *
d) a lexical verb followed by a prepositional object.

Phrasal-prepositional verbs= 1 adverbial particle + 1

preposition (always in that order) and have one meaning.
They are common in informal English. Ex: ‘run up against’,
‘do away with’
Do not get confused: often 1 single or multi-word verb can
be followed by a PP. (Module 6.4.3)

7. What do object complements do?:

a) characterise direct objects by a qualitative attribute.
b) characterise direct objects by a substantive attribute.
c) characterise direct objects by a complementary attribute.
d) Characterise direct objects by a qualitative or a substantive
attribute. *

“The Object Complement is the constituent that completes the

predicate when certain verbs such as find, make and appoint
lead us to specify some characteristic of the Direct Object”. It
normally goes right after the Direct Object.
It “can characterise the direct object by a qualitative or by a
substantive attribute expressing the name or status of the
object referent”.
Ex: Police found the suspects unwilling to cooperate.
(qualitative)
Ex: They have elected Ken captain of the golf club.
(substantive)
(Module 7.1)

8. Which of the following is NOT a connective adjunct?:

a) Of course *
b) In other words
c) First
d) Nevertheless

“Connective adjuncts tell you how the speaker or writer

understands the semantic connection between two utterances, or
parts of an utterance, while indicating the semantic relationship
holding between them: The hotel was really noisy. On the other hand,
it wasn't expensive (contrast).” They are not elements of structure,
and can connect groups, clauses, sentences and paragraphs.
The main 4 semantic types of connective adjuncts are:
-additive (ex: besides)
-contrast (ex: on the contrary)
-causal (ex: therefore)
 -temporal (ex: first)(Module 8.2.7)

As it can be easily seen, ‘of course’ does not say how structures
are connected, but shows what the speaker thinks about the content
of the message: therefore, it is a ‘stance adjunct’. (Module 8.2.5)

9. Which of the following is NOT a type of transitive

complementation?:
a) Indirect object + direct object
b) Prepositional object
c) Direct object
d) Indirect object *

Out of the three types of complementation (intransitive, copular

and transitive), the transitive one has three subtypes:
-Monotransitive (S-P-O): He bought a video.
-Ditransitive (S-P-O-O): He gave Jo the video.
-Complex transitive (S-P-O-C): I find the idea crazy.
(Introduction to chapter 3)
Thus, it is obvious that the indirect object cannot appear if
no other object does.

10. Which of the following is NOT a material process?:

a) doing
b) happening
c) causing
d) making*

“A material process expresses an action or activity which is

typically carried out by a ‘doer’ or agent”. (module 14.1).
Therefore, they refer to ‘doing’ and ‘happening’ actions, as
exemplified, respectively, in verbs ‘kick’ and ‘melt’ (Module 13.2).
Besides, we talk about ‘causative material processes’ in relation
to ergative pairs, since the anti-causative structure is derived
from a transitive one with a clear Agent initiating the action.
(Module 15.1)

On the contrary, ‘make’ appears in ‘analytical causatives’,

where the resulting state is expressed by an Attribute (the verb
does not indicate the process, which can often happen in an
alternative causative structure: They are making the road wider
and safer/They are widening the road). (Module 15.2)

11. What happens in a causative process?:

a) An Agent or Force causes something to happen. *
b) An Agent transfers an Affected Participant to a Recipient.
c) An Agent causes an action intended or a Beneficiary.
d) An Agent expresses the facility of a participant to undergo a
process.
In a purely causative process there is one Agent (with the following
characteristics: controlling, purposeful, responsible) directing its
energy towards an Affected participant. The Affected undergoes the
action (verb) and, as a result, suffers a change of state. (Module 15)
Ex: Paul opened the door. / Pat boiled the water.

12. What two major patterns of “being” (as a relational

process) are there in English?:
a) Possessive and circumstantial.
b) Identifying and attributive. *
c) Value and token.
d) Carrier and Sayer.

Relational processes answer who/what/where/when/whose is

an entity or what is an entity like: they are processes of ‘being’.
(Module 18)
Types of relational processes:
-ATTRIBUTIVE: a Carrier represents an entity, with an
Attribute characterising the earlier. The Attribute can be current
(Ex: He kept quiet.) or resulting (Ex: He became captain.)
This structure is non-reversible.
Ex: Their eldest son was a musician./The sports
equipment is on the third floor.
-IDENTIFYING: An Identified (=Token) is identified in terms
of an Identified (=Value).
This structure is reversible.
Ex: Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in Europe.
IDENTIFIED IDENTIFIER

13. What is NOT a name for the clause in which a subordinate

clause is embedded?
a) Matrix clause
b) Main clause
c) Complex clause *
d) Superordinate clause

A clause is ‘embedded’ if it has a function within another one,

called ‘superordinate clause’. In the latter, everything but the
embedded section is the ‘matrix clause’. As a result, in ‘the
doctor knows you are waiting’, the whole clause is the
superordinate clause, while ‘the doctor knows’ is the matrix
clause and ‘you are waiting’ is embedded.
(Module 11) In general, ‘main clause’ tends to refer to the
superordinate clause.

14. Which is NOT one of the main types of dependent

complement clause?:
a) that-clause
b) wh-clause
c) to-infinitive clause
 d) –en or past participle clause *

Nominal clauses are typically that-clauses (That he failed was a

surprise), wh-clauses (Why the library was closed for months
was not explained: interrogative; What he said shocked me:
wh-nominal relative clause) and non-finite clauses with either
to-infinitive, which can be introduced by a wh-word (Where to
leave the dog was the problem), or –ing (Having to go back for
the car was a nuisance). The bare infinitive can appear a few
times (Move the car is what we did). They can never be
realised by a past participle clause. (Module 5.1.2)

15. Which participants take part in a process of transfer?:

a) an agent, a process, an affected, a recipient and a
beneficiary.
b) an agent, a process, and a recipient or a beneficiary.
c) an agent, an affected, and a recipient or a beneficiary. *
d) a process, an affected, and a recipient or a beneficiary.

“With processes that encode transfer –such as give, send, lend,

charge, pay, offer and owe- the action expressed by the verb
extends not only to the Affected but to a third inherent participant,
the Recipient” (Module 16.1)
Recipient: normally receives 'goods', permission, information. It
can be substituted by a ‘TO’ phrase.
Beneficiary: it is optional. It is the participant for whom some
service is done. It can be substituted by a ‘FOR’ phrase.

16. What is the name of the agent in a mental process?:

a) doer
b) thinker
c) experiencer *
d) phenomenon

By means of mental processes we organize our mental contact

with the world. The Experiencer (also known as Senser) is that who
sees, feels, thinks, likes, etc. We cannot call this participant Agent
since no voluntary action can really be thought of. The other
participant is called the Phenomenon.

17. What is the “transitivity hypothesis”?:

a) It views transitivity as a matter of gradation.*
b) It argues does transitivity does not exist at a deep level of
abstraction.
c) It considers transitivity the defining element of the verbal
group.
d) It establishes the patterns of the verbal group and its
components.
 As stated in the right answer, according to the transitivity
hypothesis, transitivity is a matter of gradation, namely, higher or
lower transitivity levels are found in different clauses. High
transitivity corresponds to those in which there is one action, two
participants, the Subject is volitional –that is to say, wants to do
what the verb expresses-, there is a clear end-point in the action,
which, besides, is punctual. For this reason, in ‘Peter kicked the
ball’ transitivity is high, while it is much lower in ‘Peter saw the
accident’.

18. What is the effect of nominalisation?:

a) The text becomes less narrative and more descriptive.
b) There is an abundance of nouns, which makes the text less
dynamic and more static.
c) It raises the representation of a situation to a higher level of
abstraction, *
d) It raises the register of the text and its level of literariness.

Nominalisation has as an effect “a loss of human agency, which is

usually replaced by an abstraction related to the original Agent
(government spending, foreign travel). A second result is an
increase in lexical density (…) It distances us from the event,
raising the representation of a situation to a higher level of
abstraction. Once objectified and depersonalised in this way, the
event or abstraction is conceptualised as if it had temporal
persistence, instead of the transience associated with a verb”.
(Module 21.2)

19. What happens in grammatical metaphors?:

a) the expected semantic functions in a state of affairs are
transferred in relation to the syntactic functions.*
b) words are given unexpected attributes that do not correspond
to the canonical state of affairs.
c) there is a pragmatic change in the conceptualization of the
state of affairs.
d) The syntactic event is “perspectivised” in an imaginary way.

In grammatical metaphors the structure is not iconic, in other words,

it does not reflect meaning. We must bear in mind the fact that
correspondence between semantic functions and syntactic ones is
only straightforward in child and basic language use.
Ex: Our evening walk took us to Henley. (while ‘We walked to Henley
in the evening’ is perfectly straight forward).
Ex: ‘have a drink’, where the process is not represented by a verb but
by a noun.

20. Which of the following is NOT a highly common

circumstantial element in English?:
a) contingency
b) degree
c) matter
d) mood *

The most common circumstantial elements in English are

(Module 20.1):
-place and time (often in parallel expressions introduced by the
same preposition, as in “in the park” and “in May”)
-manner: including means, instrumentality and comparison
-contingency: cause, purpose, reason, concession and behalf
-accompaniment: a joint participation in a process
-modality: possibility, probability and certainty
-degree: emphasis and attenuation
-role: answering “What as?” or “In what capacity?”
-matter: information about “with reference to…”
-evidence: refers to the source of information in verbal
processes (“as X says”, “according to X”

As adjuncts, many circumstantial elements are characterised by

having several possible positions and by the possibility to have
several non-coordinated ones in a clause. (Module 8.1)

On the contrary, mood in English is relted to clause types rather

than verb inflections (so the subjunctive does not fit in the
system too well) (Module 24.4): the declarative, interrogative
and imperative moods are distinguished by variation of a part
of the clause. (Module 23.1).