Grammar of English Trivia Quiz

Answer: Either could be correct

Both are correct, though their meanings vary slightly.
"My dad is one of those spies who is always running late" means that there are many spies, and my dad is one of them. My dad is always running late.
"My dad is one of those spies who are always running late" means that there are many spies, and running late is characteristic of those spies. My dad belongs to that group.

It's a subtle semantic distinction, but both sentences are grammatically correct.

Answer: Good or bad, they are a part of my life

A clause must contain a verbal element and a subject. A verbal element is usually just a single verb, though occasionally it may be a verbal phrase. In the phrase "I put on the film", "put on" is a verbal element.

"Good or bad, they are a part of my life" contains only a single verbal element, "are", so it's impossible for it to contain a subordinate clause.

A subordinate clause is dependent on the other clause(s) within the sentence to make sense. The subordinate clauses, "if we forgot them", "to recall the people we saw" and "until I have my coffee" are not complete ideas.

"Until I have my coffee" is a subordinate clause, despite occurring first in the sentence. The clause depends on "nothing gets done" in order to complete the idea. "Nothing gets done" stands alone as a clause that forms a complete idea.

Answer: Subject predicate complement

The key distinction between a subject predicate complement (PCs) and an object is whether or not it is a separate entity to the subject. In this question, the subject, "they", is the same entity as those which sound like promising ideas. A test to determine whether a noun phrase is an object or a predicate complement is to try and rewrite the sentence in the passive voice:
"Promising ideas are sounded by them" is ungrammatical, as it implies there are two entities ("promising ideas" and "them"). The verb "sounded" is intransitive (i.e. does not take an object), so our passive voice does not make sense.

Consider if the verbal element was "propose", instead of "sounds": "They propose promising ideas". We can easily rewrite that sentence passively:
"Promising ideas are proposed by them". In this example, "promising ideas" functions as the object; the ideas and the proposers are two separate entities.

Answer: Intransitive

An intransitive clause features a verbal element that does not take an object.
In this example, "we" is the subject, "stopped" is the predicate/verbal element, and "at the café on the square" is a prepositional phrase acting as an adjunct (a part of the clause that adds supplementary information; it can be removed without rendering the clause incomplete).

A transitive clause contains a verbal element that does take an object ("We stopped the car at the café...").
A ditransitive clause contains a verbal element that takes two objects ("We bought our mother flowers").
A complex-transitive clause contains a verbal element that takes at least one object and an object predicate complement ("I consider her a good lawyer").

Answer: She has worked for me

The perfect present aspect involves the appropriate present inflection of the verb "to have", followed by the past participle form of the verb, in this case, "to work". "She is working for me" is the progressive aspect, and "she worked for me" is in the past tense. "She never works for me" is the basic present tense with a negation.

Answer: It is found outside

This is a difficult verb, as its past tense and its past participle look identical.

The past participle is always accompanied by an auxiliary verb. Auxiliary verbs are often called 'helping verbs', as they assist in expressing grammatical information about the clause, such as tense, aspect, or voice. Common auxiliary verbs include the various forms of "have" and the various forms of "be".

If you're a little unsure on auxiliary verbs, one quick test to determine whether the verb is in its past participle inflection is to replace it with a verb whose past participle inflection is different to its past tense.
"Took" is the past tense of "take", and "taken" is the past participle.
"It is taken outside" is grammatically correct, so "it is found outside" utilises the past participle.

Somewhat confusingly, the entire clause is in present tense. "Past participle" actually has nothing to do with tense. The tense in this sentence is determined by the auxiliary ("It is found outside" vs "it was found outside").

Answer: Everyone

A noun phrase is a grouping of words (sometimes just a single noun) that express information about a particular entity. A noun phrase can often be broken down into smaller sections, but the entire phrase offers information about the head of the phrase. Noun phrases in their entirety can often be replaced by a pronoun (especially when dealing with non-abstract entities).

"Everyone" is the head of the noun phrase "everyone in the house", but it does not stand as a noun phrase on its own. "In the house" is offering additional information about who "everyone" is, and is therefore part of the noun phrase.

The other three options are the only noun phrases in this clause.
"The time" is a noun phrase embedded inside a prepositional phrase.

Answer: True

A clause with negative polarity has a word or phrase which reverses the meaning of the predicate. A clause with positive polarity has no such markers. In the sentence in question, "was" is the predicate, and there are no markers to reverse the meaning of this sentence.

"She was happy" has a positive polarity.
"She wasn't happy" has a negative polarity, as the word "not" negates the entire clause.
"She was unhappy", whilst expressing a similar sentiment to "she wasn't happy", has a positive polarity, because the "un-" suffix acts as a sub-clausal negator.
A sub-clausal negator reverses the meaning of an individual word (in this case, "happy") but does not alter the predicate; the clause does not have its polarity reversed.

We can test for polarity by adding a constituent introduced by "not even". If the clause is grammatical, then the clause has a negative polarity.
For instance, "She wasn't happy, not even on her birthday" makes grammatical sense. The clause has a negative polarity. "She was unhappy, not even on her birthday" does not make sense, because the constituent is phrased for a negated verbal element in the initial clause. Therefore, we have a clause with positive polarity.

Answer: Adverb functioning as a non-central complement

A predicate complement is a noun phrase which adds additional information about the subject (or sometimes the object) of the clause.

The adverb offers additional information about the location of the knife, but an adverb cannot be a subject predicate complement.
Adverbs cannot be the subject of a sentence, either. The subject is always a noun phrase.
If we ask who or what "verb-ed" in the sentence, we can find the subject. The verb in this sentence, "is", is being performed by the knife; the knife is the entity performing the verb "to be".

Somewhat unusually, the subject (a knife) follows the predicate (is) in this sentence. The functions and parts of speech remain unchanged if we switch the word order to "A knife is here".

Answer: Very careless with their money

Everything within a phrase must talk about the head. "Very" is attributing a degree to the head "careless". "With their money" is a prepositional phrase talking about the people's carelessness, not about the people themselves, so it is a part of the adjective phrase.