1. Identify the syntactical device(s) in each of the following.
a. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh..."
--Ecclesiastes 3:1-4
b. ". . . not as a call to battle, though embattled we are" --John F. Kennedy's "Inaugural Address"
c. "And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." --John F. Kennedy's "Inaugural Address"
d. "No one who has sworn to support the Constitution, can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be unconstitutional." --Abraham Lincoln, "Address at Cooper Union"
e. I ran to the lake, she to the woods.
f. I repaired the fin-keel (a plate of metal fixed to the keel of a shallow boat).
g. In science class today, we discussed infiltration (the seeping of water through the soil and into the pores of impermeable rock) as a natural process.
h. ". . . thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument." --Abraham Lincoln, "Address at Cooper Union"
i. Last night, the wind blew, the branches cracked, the people ran, the tree fell.
j. "Not for thirty years have I looked inside this book." --Edward Abbey, Down the River (13)
k. That one became faded, the other torn.
l. The dog caught the disc, ran it back, and got rewarded.
m. "The dog walked out of the house as inside strolled the cat." --Emily McIlveene/Mr. Stover
n. The leaf, the resting place of a moth, was a deep rich brown.
o. The sun shone, the birds sang, the breeze blew through the trees on that fine day.
p. You know not how much I love you.
q. How can we fight if we've forgotten what we're fighting for?
r. "The proper place in the sentence for the word or group of words that the writer desires to make most prominent is usually the end" (Strunk and White 32).
2. Read the following passage and then answer the questions below.
(1) "Whatever they were or might have been, Paul D messed them up for good. (2) With a table and a loud male voice he had rid 124 of its claim to local fame. (3) Denver had taught herself to take pride in the condemnation Negroes heaped on them; the assumption that the haunting was done by an evil thing looking for more. (4) None of them knew the downright pleasure of enchantment, of not suspecting but knowing the things behind things. (5) Her brothers had known, but it scared them; Grandma Baby knew, but it saddened her. (6) None could appreciate the safety of ghost company. (7) Even Sethe didn't love it. (8) She just took it for granted--like a sudden change in the weather." --Toni Morrison, Beloved (37)
a. Identify the grammatical type of each of the sentences.
b. What kind of sentence openers does Morrison employ in sentences 1, 2, 3, and 7?
c. Is sentence 5 a loose sentence? How about sentence 6?