GRAMÁTICA INGLESA IV – PRACTICE TEST 1- APRIL 2016 - 1½
h. Model B
Surname and name: __________________________________ Group: _____
Read carefully the following text and answer the questions below.
My first meeting with Oscar Wilde was an astonishment (1). I never before heard a man talking with
perfect sentences, as if he had written them all over night with labour and yet all spontaneous (2). There
was present that night at Henley’s, by right of propinquity or of accident, a man full of the secret spite of
dullness, who interrupted from time to time and always to check or disorder thought (3); and I noticed with
what mastery he was foiled and thrown (4). I noticed, too, that the impression of artificiality that I think all
Wilde’s listeners have recorded, came from the perfect rounding of the sentences and from the deliberation
that made it possible (5). That very impression helped him as the effect of metre, or of the antithetical prose
of the seventeenth century, which is itself a true metre, helps a writer, for he could pass without incongruity
from some unforeseen swift stroke of wit to elaborate reverie (6). I heard him say a few nights later (7):
‘Give me “The Winter’s Tale,” “Daffodils that come before the swallow dare” but not “King Lear.” (8)
What is “King Lear” but poor life staggering in the fog?’ (9) and the slow cadence, modulated with so great
precision, sounded natural to my ears (10). That first night he praised Walter Pater’s “Essays on the
Renaissance:” (11) ‘It is my golden book; (12) I never travel anywhere without it; (13) but it is the very
flower of decadence. (14) The last trumpet should have sounded the moment it was written.’ (15) ‘But,’
said the dull man, (16) ‘would you not have given us time to read it?’ (17) ‘Oh no,’ was the retort, (18)
‘there would have been plenty of time afterwards—in either world.’ (19) I think he seemed to us, baffled as
we were by youth, or by infirmity, a triumphant figure, and to some of us a figure from another age, an
audacious Italian fifteenth century figure. (20) A few weeks before I had heard one of my father’s friends,
an official in a publishing firm that had employed both Wilde and Henley as editors, blaming Henley who
was ‘no use except under control’ and praising Wilde, ‘so indolent but such a genius;’ (21) and now the
firm became the topic of our talk. (22) ‘How often do you go to the office?’ (23) said Henley. (24) ‘I used
to go three times a week,’ (25) said Wilde, (26) ‘for an hour a day but I have since struck off one of the
days.’ (27) ‘My God,’ said Henley, (28) ‘I went five times a week for five hours a day and when I wanted
to strike off a day they had a special committee meeting.’ (29)
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QUESTIONS
1. Explain NEGATION (including type and scope) in sentences (2), (13), (17). Explain NON-ASSERTION
in sentence (13) (2 points)
2. Give the MOOD structure of the clauses in (8), (9), (15) & (23), and explain whether they are direct or
indirect SPEECH ACTS (2 points)
3. Explain the THEMATISATIONS in sentences (3), (11), (19) & (26) (2 points)
4. Explain the use of LET as an imperative marker (in contrast with lexical LET) (2 points)
5. Which of the following verbs can be used performatively? anger, arrest, command, frighten, swear,
tempt, warn (2 points)
