EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 5 of 120

Correct — B, (b) RSPQ. That sequence gives 'On more than one occasion I have witnessed bitter fights between the two rival teams.' Three of the four parts are locked to each other and the fourth is free, so the item is decided by the locks. S, 'I have witnessed', is the only part containing a subject and a finite verb, so it is the spine of the sentence — and 'witness' is a transitive verb, which means it must be followed by its direct object. Only one part is a noun phrase capable of being that object: P, 'bitter fights'. English does not let an adverbial come between a verb and a short direct object, so S is immediately followed by P; that single test eliminates three of the four options, because (a) and (d) both put another part straight after 'I have witnessed' and (c) puts the verb at the very end. Next, Q, 'between the two rival teams', is a post-modifier of the noun 'fights' — a fight is something that happens between parties, and the phrase names them — so Q must sit immediately after P, not after the verb. That gives the block S + P + Q. R, 'on more than one occasion', is a time adverbial and is the most mobile element in an English clause; with the other three parts forming a continuous block, R can only go in front, which is also its most natural position with a present-perfect verb. R, S, P, Q is option (b).

• (a)SRQP — 'I have witnessed on more than one occasion between the two rival teams bitter fights.' The verb is separated from its object by two intervening phrases, and the object 'bitter fights' is left stranded at the end. English does allow an object to move rightwards past an adverbial, but only when the object is long and complex — 'I have witnessed on more than one occasion the kind of bitter fighting that ends a friendship'. A two-word object gives the sentence no reason to postpone it, so the shift is not licensed and the ordering simply reads as broken.
• (c)QPRS — 'Between the two rival teams bitter fights on more than one occasion I have witnessed.' This does keep the noun 'fights' with its modifier, but it fronts the whole object and drives the subject and verb to the very end, a word order that belongs to verse and to deliberate archaism rather than to prose. It also opens the sentence with 'between the two rival teams', where the phrase modifies nothing that has yet appeared. Any sequence that ends on the only finite verb in the set should be checked with suspicion; in this item type it is almost never the key.
• (d)SQRP — 'I have witnessed between the two rival teams on more than one occasion bitter fights.' This commits both available errors at once. It separates the transitive verb from its object, leaving 'bitter fights' at the end for no reason, and it detaches 'between the two rival teams' from the noun it modifies, so the phrase lands next to 'witnessed' and appears to describe where the witnessing took place — as though the speaker stood between the teams. A prepositional phrase naming the parties to a reciprocal event belongs with the noun that names the event, not with the verb of perception.

The useful way to see a jumbled item is as a set of parts that are locked to one another plus one part that is free, and the answer is fixed by the locks. Two locks operate here. The first is verb and object: a transitive verb such as 'witness' demands a direct object, and in English an adverbial does not normally slip between the two — 'I have witnessed bitter fights', never 'I have witnessed on more than one occasion bitter fights', unless the object is so long that the sentence gains by postponing it. The second is noun and post-modifier: 'between the two rival teams' says who the fights were between, so it belongs to 'fights'; moved next to the verb it would say where the witnessing happened. That leaves the time adverbial 'on more than one occasion', which is genuinely mobile — English will take it at the front, in the middle or at the end — and because it is mobile it is the part that carries no information about the ordering. Recognising which part is free is as useful as recognising the locks: it tells you not to waste time deciding where the free part 'sounds better' until the locked block is built.

This is the last of the five rearrangement items opening the APFC paper, and it is the most mechanical of them: one structural test, verb next to object, disposes of three options at once. That makes it the item to attempt first if the set is being worked under time pressure, and it illustrates the general point that these five questions are not equally hard — item 2 turns on a preference between two grammatical orders, item 4 on where a passive agent belongs, while this one turns on a rule that admits almost no exceptions. A candidate who spends the same time on each is mispricing them. The marking makes the calculation concrete: every question on this paper carries 2·5 marks and a third of that is deducted for a wrong response, so the items that can be settled by a rule are the ones worth answering with confidence, and the ones that come down to register are the ones to leave if the reasoning has not converged.

• 'Witness' here is a transitive verb and must take a direct object. In English an adverbial does not normally intervene between a verb and its direct object, so 'I have witnessed' is immediately followed by the noun phrase it acts on — a test that removes three of this item's four options by itself.
• The exception, known as heavy-NP shift, lets a direct object move to the right past an adverbial when the object is long or complex — 'I have witnessed on more than one occasion the kind of bitter fighting that ends a friendship'. A two-word object such as 'bitter fights' is not heavy, so the exception does not apply here.
• 'Between the two rival teams' post-modifies the noun 'fights'. 'Between' names the parties to a reciprocal event, and the noun denoting that event is 'fights', not the verb 'witnessed'; placing the phrase next to the verb changes it into a statement about where the observer stood.
• Time adverbials such as 'on more than one occasion' are among the freest elements in an English clause, taking front, mid or end position. In a rearrangement item the mobile part is the one that yields no constraint, so it should be placed last, after the locked parts have been assembled.
• The present perfect 'I have witnessed' reports experience accumulated up to the present without dating it, which is why it sits naturally with an indefinite frequency expression like 'on more than one occasion' and would sit badly with a definite one such as 'last Tuesday'.

• Placing the mobile time adverbial first and then trying to fit the rest around it. Build the locked block — verb, object, post-modifier — and let the free part take whatever position is left.
• Letting 'between the two rival teams' attach to the verb. As a modifier of 'witnessed' it turns a sentence about fights between teams into a claim about where the speaker was standing.
• Treating a poetic inversion as an acceptable answer. An option that ends on the sentence's only finite verb, with the object fronted, is grammatical only in verse and is a decoy in this item type.

The APFC English section builds at least one rearrangement item per set around a single decisive adjacency — a transitive verb and its object, a preposition and its complement, a determiner and its noun — so that one test disposes of most of the options. The remaining items in the same set are pitched harder and turn on preference between grammatical orders. Expect the free part to be an adverbial of time or frequency, and expect the examiner to build a distractor by dropping that adverbial into the one place English will not take it, between the verb and a short object.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Rearrange these parts into the most appropriate sentence: 'sharp disagreements (P) / among the member states (Q) / for many years (R) / the committee has recorded (S)'

  • (a)SRQP
  • (b)RSPQ
  • (c)QPRS
  • (d)SQPR

  Answer(b) RSPQ — 'For many years the committee has recorded sharp disagreements among the member states.' S carries the only finite verb, and 'record' is transitive, so its object P must follow immediately; Q post-modifies 'disagreements' by naming the parties, so it follows P; and R, a duration adverbial, is the free part and takes the front position, which suits the present perfect.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In which one of the following sentences is the adverbial correctly placed?

  • (a)She reviewed carefully the draft agreement.
  • (b)She reviewed the draft agreement carefully.
  • (c)She carefully the draft agreement reviewed.
  • (d)Carefully the draft agreement she reviewed.

  Answer(b) She reviewed the draft agreement carefully — the manner adverbial follows the verb and its object rather than splitting them. Option (a) wedges the adverbial between the verb and a short object, which English resists; options (c) and (d) move the verb away from its object altogether and are not ordinary prose word order.