The HyperTextBooks Daniel Kies
Department of English
College of DuPage
Modern English Grammar
English 2126
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Quiz 2 version A: Identifying constituent phrases in the clause

Each sentence has one phrase highlighted in underlined red italics. You need to name the kind of phrase it is. Your choices are:


  1. Noun phrase (NP)
  2. Verb phrase (VP)
  3. Adjective phrase (AdjP)
  4. Adverb phrase (AdvP)
  5. Prepositional phrase (PP)

Helpful hints:


  1. Remember that a phrase has both obligatory and optional components. Thus, from a narrow technical sense of the word in linguistics, a phrase might be realized as a single word in some cases.
  2. Remember too that pronouns can function as the head of NPs.
  3. Finally, remember that words ending in-ed and -ing can function as verbs, adjectives, and nouns, so look for clues, such as intensifying adverbs as premodifiers to ascertain its adjective use, as in so tired or very worried or articles a/an or the to find noun use, as in a painting or The Shining.