SKOLEEKSAMEN/SKULEEKSAMEN2010/VÅR

2 sider

ENG1100 – Introduction to English grammar

Eksamen varer i 4 timer/timar. Tirsdag/Tysdag 25.05.2010===================================================================Ingen hjelpemidler tillatt. / Ingen hjelpemiddel tillatne.

Pass marks are required on both questions.

1. (40%) Explain the difference in form and meaning between the members of each of the following sentence pairs.

1a This is not a good thing to take home to your girlfriend. b Taking it home to your girlfriend is not a good thing.

2a So you stopped playing around for a while? b So you stopped to play around for a while?

3a The chimpanzees must have figured it out by themselves. b The chimpanzees must figure it out by themselves.

4a The cheese rolled down the hill. b The baker rolled down his sleeves.

5a Mr Turner turned traitor. b Mr Turner turned a corner.

2. (60 %) Read the following text and answer the questions below.

Inspector Norse - Why are Nordic detective novels so successful?THE neat streets of Oslo are not a natural setting for crime fiction. Nor, with its cows and country smells, is the flat farming land of Sweden’s southern tip. Yet in the past decade Nordic crime writers have unleashed a wave of detective fiction that is right up there with the very best international output. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy alone has sold 27m copies in over 40 countries. The release this month in Britain and America of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, the film of the first Larsson book, will only boost sales.The transfer to the screen of his sprawling epic (the author died suddenly in 2004 just as the trilogy was being edited and translated) will cement the Nordics’ renown. The more unruly subplots have been eliminated, leaving

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Institutt for li tteratur, områdestudier og europeiske språk

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the hero, a middle-aged financial journalist named Mikael Blomkvist, and an emotionally damaged computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, at the centre of every scene.Most important is the setting. The countries that the Nordic writers call home are prosperous and organised, a “soft society” according to the Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo. But the protection offered by a cradle-to-grave welfare system hides a dark underside. The best Scandinavian fiction mines the seam that connects the insiders—the rich and powerful—and the outsiders, represented by the poor and the vulnerable. Analysing Scandinavia and its psyche is nothing new. But the greatest influence on these rising writers has been Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, a Swedish couple. Journalists and committed Marxists, they coauthored the ten-volume Martin Beck series between 1965 and 1975 with the aim of criticising the country’s welfare state. The central character is a likeable and dedicated policeman with a dry sense of humour. But the books, which closely study police procedure, feature an ensemble of his colleagues, all believable characters drawn with the lightest of touches. By turn entertaining and funny examinations of the day-to-day work of policemen, they are also gripping and complex thrillers.The quality and popularity of crime fiction has given Nordic novelists a prestige that authors from other countries do not enjoy. This, in turn, has drawn in new writers. The next potential blockbuster could well be Leif G.W. Persson’s “Fall of the Welfare State”—though a more enticing title is planned for its English-language debut. First published in Sweden in 2002, it is written by a professor of criminology who has been involved in many of Sweden’s high-profile crime cases and is an epic and ambitious tale spanning several decades of Swedish history.The cold, dark climate, where doors are bolted and curtains drawn, provides a perfect setting for crime writing. The nights are long, the liquor hard, the people, according to Mr Nesbo, “brought up to hide their feelings” and hold on to their secrets. If you are driving through Norway at dusk and see a farmhouse with its lights on and its doors open, do not stop, he warns, only half jokingly. You are as likely to be greeted by a crime scene as a warm welcome.

(Adapted from The Economist)

Questions:a) Comment on the underlined -ly words at lines 6 (suddenly), 8 (emotionally), 17 (closely)

and 30 (likely). In each case you should sate what word class the word belongs in and what its syntactic function is (e.g. whether it is a separate clause element or a modifier within a clause element).

b) Determine the form of the verb phrase was being edited and translated at lines 6-7 in terms of tense, aspect and voice. How is each element expressed?

c) Comment on the word order of the sentence Most important is the setting at line 10. Suggest what motivated this word order.

d) Comment on the use of the underlined words at line 13: rich, powerful, poor and vulnerable. What word class do these words belong in, and what is their syntactic function here? What kind of meaning do such words typically express when used in this function?

e) Give a complete syntactic analysis of the underlined sentence at lines 21-22.f) Identify one clause of each of the following types in the text: (i) infinitive clause, (ii) -ing

participle clause, (iii) past participle clause, and (iv) verbless clause. In each case state what is the syntactic function of the clause you have identified within the superordinate clause.

g) Explain briefly what is meant by a conjunct adverbial. Then identify two such adverbials in the text.

h) Explain the difference between the long and the short passive. Then identify one construction of each type from the text.

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