3 Compound and complex sentences

exercise 3.1

Decide whether the following sentences are simple, compound or complex.

1. The knife blades shine in the afternoon sunlight as the man in the flashy shirt pushes them deeper inside the metal hoops.

2. He rushes forward and then he dives head first through the treacherous hole.

4. An hour’s drive south of Budapest is Lake Balaton, which offers a sunny, uncrowded beach.

5. The Shakers died out, but they left behind some great furniture and interesting houses.

6. The island of New Guinea is one of the most intriguing destinations in the world.

7. About half the photosynthesis that removes carbon dioxide from the air occurs in the tropics.

8. The species is believed to be near extinction.

9. Many marchers stayed at the barricades into the early morning hours today.

10. Mr Nimro insists that he talked to Mr.Squevel in 1979.

exercise 3.2

Decide whether the following sentences are simple, compound or complex.

If the sentence is complex, mark — in the usual way— the main subject and the main verb.

(1) I am not surprised by the dramatic increase in complaints by the public against the service provided by banks.

2. Anti-government guerillas in Uganda have abducted a British ecologist and several other people in an attack on a remote game lodge.

3. American troops in Somalia went on high alert after a Marine was killed in an ambush of a night patrol near Mogadishu airport.

4. Two Japanese video game giants, Nintendo and Sega Enterprises, said games sold in Japan from next month would start carrying labels warning of the risk of epileptic fits.

5. The software the two companies sell in Europe and the US already carries such warnings.

6. In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army killed three Palestinians in a clash with stone throwers, according to the Israeli army.

7. The power struggle in Zaire between President Mobutu Sese Seko and his arch enemy, Prime Minister Etienne Tshisekedi, moved further towards confrontation when the interim parliament said President Mobutu was guilty of high treason.

8. French politician, René Pleven, whose career began in 1940 when he joined General de Gaulle’s Free French in London and who then went on to become prime minister of the Fourth Republic twice, has died, aged 92.

9. More than 50 people drowned when the Polish rail ferry Jan Heweliusz capsized in churning seas and winds of up to 100 mph in the Baltic off the German coast.

10. Mrs Bhutto was surprised by the appointment but called it a ‘positive step’.

exercise 3.3

Underline all the dependent clauses in the following sentences. Indicate the FUNCTION of the clause or clauses as follows: noun, ‘n’; adverbial, ‘adv’; adjective, ‘adj’.

1. In Hong Kong’s fashionable district of Lan Kwai Fong, 20 people were killed when crowd celebrations went wrong.

2. The 15,000 revellers were gripped by panic after a number of people fell to the ground.

3. David Schoo and his wife Sharon, a well-to-do couple from Chicago,were charged with child cruelty after leaving their daughters, aged nine and four, alone at home while they spent Christmas on the beach at Acapulco, Mexico.

4. Mr Lu stressed that there had been no improvement in relations with Britain.

6. Brazil’s senate agreed last week by 76 votes to three to ban ex-president Fernando Collor de Mello from public office for eight years.

7. Her father was a customs and excise officer who sent her to two Catholic schools although the family was Anglican.

8. The crucial requirement was to register Volodya as the car’s new owner.