The names for the parts of a sentence are simpler than most people remember. These ten questions cover the ones that come up constantly.
English grammar has a reputation for being difficult that it does not entirely deserve. Much of the difficulty comes from terminology imported from Latin, a language built quite differently, and from rules invented in the eighteenth century by writers who thought English needed tidying. The parts of speech themselves are a small, useful set, and almost everyone uses them correctly long before learning what they are called. Punctuation is younger than the words. Early manuscripts ran text together without gaps or stops, and the marks arrived gradually as printing spread and silent reading replaced reading aloud. The semicolon has a known inventor and a known date. The apostrophe, which causes more public argument than any other mark, was doing two unrelated jobs almost from the start.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: D. A noun
Why: English marks them mainly with determiners and plural endings. French and German add grammatical gender, which English lost after the Norman period.
Answer: C. The semicolon
Why: The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius introduced it in 1494. It marks a pause longer than a comma but shorter than a full stop.
Answer: B. A verb
Why: It can also modify an adjective or another adverb. The -ly ending covers only some of them, since "fast", "well" and "soon" are adverbs too.
Answer: A. Omitted letters
Why: Its other main job is showing possession, as in "the dog's bowl". The two uses collide in "its" and "it's", which is where most errors happen.
Answer: D. ball
Why: The direct object receives the action of the verb. English signals it by position in the sentence, while Latin and Russian use case endings instead.
Answer: C. Joins words, phrases or clauses
Why: "And", "but" and "or" are coordinating and link equals. "Because" and "although" are subordinating and make one clause depend on another.
Answer: B. beneath
Why: Prepositions mark relations of place, time or direction. English has only a few dozen, and they are among the oldest words in the language.
Answer: A. Before the final "and" in a list
Why: It takes its name from Oxford University Press house style. Its defenders point to lists whose meaning changes without it.
Answer: D. A word standing in for a noun
Why: English pronouns still distinguish subject from object, as in "he" and "him". Ordinary nouns lost that distinction centuries ago.
Answer: C. Subject, verb, object
Why: Subject-object-verb is at least as common worldwide, and is the pattern of Japanese, Turkish and Hindi. Word order in English does the work that endings do elsewhere.
A Germanic language wearing a French coat and carrying a Latin dictionary. Why English spelling is a mess with reasons.
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