THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE: EXERCISES
1. Identify the adjective phrases in the sentences below and analyse them saying
as much as you can about each of them (whether they are immediate
constituents of a sentence or a phrase, their function, etc.).
2. He was quite exceptionally brave.
3. Careless people are apt to make mistakes.
4. I am very worried that he might get involved with that crowd.
5. It is quite clear that she feels uncertain what to tell her.
6. I was very surprised at what happened next.
7. He was so ungracious as to call it a point too trivial to be worth mentioning.
8. The children were all very eager for the party to start.
9. That is equal to blackmail.
10. He si becoming too big for his boots.
11. The prisoners were given quite unnecessarily brutal treatment.
2- The noun phrases below contain adjective phrases functioning as postmodifier. Which
of these can be turned into discontinuous modifiers?
1. a plan less ambitious than we expected
2. customers unwilling to pay
3. a man as rich as my father
4. books hard to come by
5. a girl as dim as her sister is clever
6. a theory difficult to explain
7. a house different from yours
8. a boy interested in bird watching
9. a point so trivial that it is not worth mentioning
10. people averse to hard work
