Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner (APFC) 2016 recruitment test, advertisement 170. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, B-CRHE-O-PAPA); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part A. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

Consider the sentence : 'The teacher gave me the book'. 1 2 3 4 5 6 where the words are numbered for convenience of reference. Consider also the insertion of a single word 'only' into this sentence to indicate a desired emphasis. Where shall this word be inserted if the emphasis is to be (i) On the recipient (ii) On the uniqueness of the item given (iii) On the giver respectively (only one at a time) ?

(a)(i) Between 3-4; (ii) After 6; (iii) Between 2-3
(b)(i) Between 3-4; (ii) Between 5-6; (iii) Before 1
(c)(i) Between 4-5; (ii) Between 3-4; (iii) After 1
(d)(i) Between 2-3; (ii) Between 4-5; (iii) Between 1-2

Answer

Why

Correct — B, (b) (i) Between 3-4; (ii) Between 5-6; (iii) Before 1.

The whole question is about position, so begin by fixing the positions. The paper prints the sentence on its own line with the digits underneath, each digit standing under one word:

'The teacher gave me the book'. 1 2 3 4 5 6

So 1 is ‘The’, 2 is ‘teacher’, 3 is ‘gave’, 4 is ‘me’, 5 is ‘the’ and 6 is ‘book’. Six words give seven places where a word can be dropped in: before 1, between 1 and 2, between 2 and 3, between 3 and 4, between 4 and 5, between 5 and 6, and after 6. The three sub-items ask for three of those seven, one at a time.

The rule that decides them is that ‘only’ attaches to what comes immediately after it. Move it and you move the emphasis.

Sub-item (i) asks for emphasis on the recipient, which is ‘me’, word 4. Put ‘only’ immediately before it — between 3 and 4 — and the sentence reads ‘The teacher gave only me the book’: nobody else received it.

Sub-item (ii) asks for emphasis on the uniqueness of the item given. Placed between 5 and 6, inside the noun phrase and after ‘the’, it reads ‘The teacher gave me the only book’ — that is, the sole book there was. This is the placement that says something about the book itself rather than about the list of things handed over.

Sub-item (iii) asks for emphasis on the giver, which is ‘The teacher’, words 1 and 2 together. ‘Only’ has to go before the whole phrase — before 1 — giving ‘Only the teacher gave me the book’: nobody else gave it.

Between 3 and 4, between 5 and 6, before 1 — that is the keyed option, and it is the only one of the four that gets all three right.

Why the others are wrong

(a)(i) Between 3-4; (ii) After 6; (iii) Between 2-3 — This option opens correctly and then goes wrong twice. Its first placement, between 3 and 4, is the same as the keyed one and gives ‘The teacher gave only me the book’, so a candidate who checks only the first sub-item will be satisfied and stop. Its second placement puts ‘only’ after 6: ‘The teacher gave me the book only.’ A trailing ‘only’ in English is loose — it reads as ‘merely’, colouring the whole statement rather than fixing on the book, and it says nothing about the book being the sole one, which is what the sub-item asks for. Its third placement, between 2 and 3, gives ‘The teacher only gave me the book’, where ‘only’ sits before the verb and emphasises the act: she gave it, she did not lend it or read it aloud. The giver has not been emphasised at all. The lesson is to test every sub-item before choosing: a composite option that is right at the start is the most dangerous kind.
(c)(i) Between 4-5; (ii) Between 3-4; (iii) After 1 — This option contains three real placements, each of which is the right answer to a different question — the sub-items have been shuffled. Between 4 and 5 gives ‘The teacher gave me only the book’, which restricts what was handed over, so the emphasis falls on the item rather than on the recipient that sub-item (i) asks about. Between 3 and 4 gives ‘The teacher gave only me the book’, which is the emphasis on the recipient, not the uniqueness of the item that sub-item (ii) wants. After 1 gives ‘The only teacher gave me the book’, and that is a genuinely different claim: it says there was just one teacher, making the noun unique rather than marking her out as the one who did the giving. A shuffled option of this kind is the setter’s way of checking that a candidate has matched each placement to its own sub-item instead of recognising a set of familiar-looking positions.
(d)(i) Between 2-3; (ii) Between 4-5; (iii) Between 1-2 — Every one of the three placements here is wrong, and each is wrong in a way worth knowing. Between 2 and 3 gives ‘The teacher only gave me the book’ — ‘only’ before the verb qualifies the action, so the sentence is about what she did rather than about who received it. Between 4 and 5 gives ‘The teacher gave me only the book’, which says nothing else was given; that is a restriction on the list of items, not a statement that the book was the sole book, and the difference between ‘only the book’ and ‘the only book’ is exactly what sub-item (ii) is testing. Between 1 and 2 gives ‘The only teacher gave me the book’, the uniqueness of the teacher rather than emphasis on her as the giver. Note also that this last placement names the same gap as ‘After 1’ in the option before it, which is a useful reminder to convert every label into a numbered gap before comparing options.

Concept

‘Only’ is a focusing adverb, and in English a focusing adverb takes as its target whatever immediately follows it. That single rule generates the whole item. In ‘Only the teacher gave me the book’ the target is ‘the teacher’, so the claim is that nobody else gave it. In ‘The teacher only gave me the book’ the target is the verb, so the claim is about the act — she gave it and did nothing more. In ‘The teacher gave only me the book’ the target is ‘me’: no other person received it. In ‘The teacher gave me only the book’ the target is ‘the book’ as an item on a list: nothing else was handed over. In ‘The teacher gave me the only book’ the word has slipped inside the noun phrase, past the determiner ‘the’, and there it stops focusing and starts modifying — it now describes the book as the sole one in existence.

That last move is the subtle one and the reason the paper set this question. Before the determiner, ‘only’ restricts; after it, ‘only’ asserts uniqueness. ‘Only the book’ and ‘the only book’ are built from the same three words in almost the same order and say quite different things.

One further point of style: a trailing ‘only’ at the end of a sentence is ambiguous and, in careful writing, avoided. Manuals of usage advise placing ‘only’ immediately before the element it limits, which is precisely the discipline this question is testing.

This item is unlike anything else on the paper. Its stem carries a sentence printed on its own line with the digits 1 to 6 set underneath, each digit sitting directly beneath one word, and that alignment is the basis of everything the options say. Its sub-items are lettered with roman numerals inside the stem — the only place in the booklet where roman numerals appear in that role — and each of the four options is itself a set of three answers, so the candidate must evaluate twelve placements rather than four.

The design has a clear purpose. A composite option cannot be answered by recognition; it has to be checked. And because one wrong option opens with the correct first placement and another contains three placements that are each correct for some sub-item, a candidate who verifies one line and assumes the rest will very likely choose wrongly.

The practical method is mechanical and quick. Write the seven gaps out — before 1, 1|2, 2|3, 3|4, 4|5, 5|6, after 6 — decide the three placements for yourself before reading any option, and then look for the option that matches all three. Deciding first and matching afterwards is much faster than testing four composite options in turn, and it is immune to the trap of an option that begins well.

One small oddity of the printing is worth noting because it slows people down: the options name gaps in three different ways — ‘Between 3-4’, ‘Before 1’, ‘After 6’ — and ‘After 1’ in one option and ‘Between 1-2’ in another describe the same gap.

Key facts

In the printed sentence the numbers stand under the words as 1 ‘The’, 2 ‘teacher’, 3 ‘gave’, 4 ‘me’, 5 ‘the’, 6 ‘book’, and six words give seven possible insertion points.
‘Only’ focuses on whatever immediately follows it, so its position, not its presence, decides where the emphasis falls.
Emphasis on the recipient needs ‘only’ before ‘me’, between 3 and 4: ‘The teacher gave only me the book.’
Emphasis on the uniqueness of the item needs ‘only’ inside the noun phrase, between 5 and 6: ‘The teacher gave me the only book.’
Emphasis on the giver needs ‘only’ before the whole subject phrase, before 1: ‘Only the teacher gave me the book.’
‘Only the book’ restricts what was given; ‘the only book’ says the book was the sole one — the same words either side of the determiner, with different meanings.

Study next

Focusing adverbs and their placement: only, just, even, merely, also, alone — and how each changes a sentence as it moves.The misplaced ‘only’ as a point of usage, and why manuals advise putting it immediately before the element it limits.Determiners and noun phrases: why a word inserted after ‘the’ behaves differently from the same word inserted before it.Emphasis by other means — cleft sentences (‘It was the teacher who gave me the book’), fronting, and stress in speech.Composite multiple-choice options, where one option answers several sub-questions at once, and the discipline of checking every part.

Common traps

Choosing an option because its first placement is right. One wrong option begins with exactly the keyed placement for the first sub-item.
Treating ‘only the book’ and ‘the only book’ as the same. One restricts what was given, the other says the book was the sole one.
Putting ‘only’ before the verb when the giver is to be emphasised; that emphasises the act instead.
Accepting a trailing ‘only’ after the last word as a way of stressing the item; at the end of a sentence it reads as ‘merely’ and fixes on nothing.
Comparing option labels without converting them to gaps — ‘After 1’ and ‘Between 1-2’ name the same place.

This is the only item of its kind in the paper, and its shape is the thing to remember: a sentence with its words numbered underneath, sub-items in roman numerals inside the stem, and four composite options each answering all the sub-items at once. Questions of this design reward a candidate who works out the answers before looking at the options and then matches, because every option is built to be partly right — one shares the first placement with the key, one shuffles three correct placements among the wrong sub-items, and one is wrong throughout. The underlying grammar, the placement of ‘only’, is a standing favourite of English sections in recruitment tests, more often asked as ‘which sentence is correct’ or ‘where should the word be inserted’. Learn the five positions of ‘only’ in a short sentence and the difference each makes, and the item becomes arithmetic.

Related PYQs

EPFO_APFC_2016_Q10

Arrange the following to form a grammatically correct sentence : 1. Einstein was 2. although a great scientist 3. weak in Arithmetic 4. right from his school days Select the correct answer using the codes given below :

(a) 4, 1, 3 and 2
(b) 2, 1, 3 and 4
(c) 4, 3, 1 and 2
(d) 2, 3, 1 and 4

Answer(b) 2, 1, 3 and 4

The other item in this block that turns on word order rather than vocabulary, where four numbered fragments have to be arranged into a grammatical sentence.

EPFO_APFC_2016_Q9

Consider the statement : 'The message of peace and brotherhood permeated the address by the Chief Guest.' Which of the following is meant by 'permeate' in this statement ?

(a) To advocate
(b) To spread all over
(c) To anchor and stabilize
(d) To leave a permanent impression

Answer(b) To spread all over

An item in the same block where what is being asked about is marked by typography alone, so that reading the printed page carefully is part of the task.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
In the sentence ‘She showed the inspector the file’, where should ‘only’ be inserted to say that the inspector, and nobody else, was shown the file ?
- (a)Before ‘She’
- (b)Between ‘She’ and ‘showed’
- (c)Between ‘showed’ and ‘the inspector’
- (d)After ‘file’
Answer(c) Between ‘showed’ and ‘the inspector’ — ‘only’ focuses on what follows it, so ‘She showed only the inspector the file’ restricts the person shown. Option (a) would restrict the person who showed it, option (b) would qualify the act of showing, and option (d) leaves a trailing ‘only’ that reads as ‘merely’ and fixes on nothing in particular.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which pair of sentences differs in meaning ?
- (a)‘He read only the summary’ and ‘He only read the summary’
- (b)‘He read the summary’ and ‘The summary was read by him’
- (c)‘He read just the summary’ and ‘He read only the summary’
- (d)‘Only he read the summary’ and ‘He alone read the summary’
Answer(a) ‘He read only the summary’ and ‘He only read the summary’ — the first restricts what he read, the second qualifies the act of reading, so the two make different claims. Option (b) gives the same claim in the passive voice, option (c) substitutes ‘just’ for ‘only’ in the same position without changing the meaning, and option (d) gives two ways of saying that nobody else read it.

Why