English Grammar - Sentence Structure and Transformation: 3 MCQs with Answers

In ‘He left her everything he possessed’, ‘He’ is the subject and ‘left’ the finite verb. The verb ‘leave’ is here used ditransitively, that is with two objects: ‘her’ is the indirect object naming the person who benefits, and ‘everything he possessed’ is the direct object naming the thing transferred. The pattern is therefore Subject–Verb–Indirect Object–Direct Object, abbreviated SVOO. There is no adverbial of place, time or manner in the sentence, so patterns containing A are ruled out, and no word completes the meaning of an object, so there is no complement either.

A simple sentence contains only one finite verb and therefore only one clause. In ‘It was too long a talk to hold the interest of the listeners’, the only finite verb is ‘was’; the phrase ‘to hold the interest of the listeners’ is a to-infinitive, which is a non-finite form and does not create a clause of its own. Since there is no subordinating conjunction and no coordinating conjunction joining two finite clauses, the sentence is neither complex nor compound. Infinitives, participles and gerunds often make a simple sentence look longer than it is.

When a sentence beginning with the exclusive word ‘only’ is transformed into the negative, the standard equivalent is ‘none but’, which preserves the exclusive meaning by first denying everyone and then admitting the single exception. ‘Only a coward would say so’ therefore becomes ‘None but a coward would say so.’ The other options reverse the sense: ‘No coward would say so’ and ‘A coward would not say so’ both deny of the coward exactly what the original asserts of him. Similar transformations are ‘Only he can do it’ to ‘None but he can do it’.