H Period, Honors English IV, Mrs. Lazard Why is the inclusion of the story of Beowulf's
swimming match with Brecca important? How
does this story connect to Beowulf's battle with
Grendel? What are we learning about Beowulf's
character?

The inclusion of the swimming competition is important because it shows a defeat for Beowulf and humanizes him, in addition, this defeat makes some people doubt the ability of Beowulf to win Grendel in a battle.

Explanation:

Beowulf and Brecca have a silly swimming competition to test which one is a better swimmer. During the competition, Beowulf is attacked by sea monsters and ends up losing to Brecca, who becomes the best swimmer in the region.

This defeat makes many doubt whether Beowulf is really capable of defeating Grendel. Because the battle against Grendel will not be silly and easy and Beowulf was unable to defeat a simple man in a silly swimming competition.

This teaches us that Beowulf, despite all his strength and heroism, is a human being, like so many others, susceptible to failure and defeat.

the sentence does not violate the phrase structure second rule (introduced by noam chomsky) because noun phrases consist of a determiner such as a, the or every, and a noun. in the sentence, the noun phrase the cake includes a determiner (the) and a noun (cake).

on the other hand, the first rule indicates that a sentence encloses a noun phrase, followed by a verb phrase. the example sentence can be analysed as follows:

john (n) + ate (v) + the (det) + cake (n).

b. our party quickly made its way into the cave / but we failed to find our host [the cyclops] himself inside.