All of the exercises have complete answers in the back of the book. It is very important for you to work through these exercises. There is a world of difference between the passive knowledge gained by reading the explanations and the active command gained by writing out the exercises. | 48 Noun Phrases 3. The senator from California expressed her concern about the problem. 4. A reporter in China broke the story about the peace talks. 5. The door in the dining room really needs a new coat of paint. 6. They had a big victory despite all the odds. 7. A new painting by the English painter Turner has just been discovered. 8. I had no illusions about my chances. 9. The witness to the crime refused to testify. 10. We couldn t understand his motive for lying. 11. The rim of the cup was chipped. 12. It was no time for indecision. 13. The waiting period in the clinic is nearly an hour. 14. It seemed like we visited every old church in the city. 15. The period just after sunset is the most dangerous time to drive. It is not very difficult to recognize prepositional phrases. It is more difficult to figure out whether they are adjectival noun modifiers or adverbial modifiers of verbs and other adverbs . Adjectival and adverbial prepositional phrases look exactly alike. For example compare the prepositional phrase with friends in the following sentences We had a nice dinner last night with friends. A nice dinner with friends is always a great pleasure. In the first sentence with friends is adverbial but in the second sentence with friends is adjectival modifying the noun dinner. The only way to reliably identify adjectival prepositional phrases is by testing the prepositional phrase by third-person pronoun substitution. When a prepositional phrase along with the noun can be replaced by a third-person pronoun that phrase must be a noun modifier. Likewise when a prepositional phrase cannot be replaced by a third-person pronoun that prepositional phrase is adverbial. Here is the third-person pronoun replacement test applied to the two example sentences given above it We had a nice dinner last night with friends. it A nice dinner with friends is always a great pleasure. Post-Noun Modifiers 49 As you can see the third-person pronoun substitution test shows that the
