Which one of the following parts of the sentence, “After a lot of argument I brought him forward to my point of view”, has an error?

Correct — B, (b) I brought him forward.

The error is the particle. English has a settled phrasal verb for persuading somebody to accept your opinion — to bring a person round to your point of view, or in American spelling around — and the sentence needs that one. ‘Bring forward’ is a different verb altogether, and it has three uses, none of which fits here: to move an event to an earlier time (the hearing has been brought forward to Monday), to propose or raise something for consideration (to bring forward an amendment), and in accountancy to carry an amount from one page or period into the next, the ‘balance brought forward’ of every ledger. Persuasion is not among them.

The third part of the sentence is the proof, and the setters have left it in place deliberately. ‘To my point of view’ is exactly the complement that ‘bring round’ takes: one comes round to a view, and one brings another person round to it. ‘Bring forward’ does not take that complement at all — a date is brought forward, not brought forward to an opinion. So parts (b) and (c) do not fit each other as printed, and since (c) is idiomatic on its own, the fault must lie in the particle in (b).

This is what phrasal verbs test. The verb ‘bring’ carries almost no meaning by itself in these combinations; the particle supplies it, and it does so by convention rather than by logic. Bring about is to cause, bring up is to rear a child or to raise a subject, bring out is to publish or to make evident, bring off is to succeed in something difficult, bring down is to reduce or to topple, bring on is to cause something unwelcome. Nothing in the words ‘round’ or ‘forward’ explains why one of them means persuasion; the pairing simply has to be known.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)After a lot of argument — ‘After a lot of argument’ is correct English. ‘Argument’ has two lives: a countable one, in which arguments are individual disputes or individual reasons (they had three arguments that week; his strongest argument), and an uncountable one meaning debate or the process of arguing, which is the one here. ‘A lot of’ takes either kind, so ‘after a lot of argument’ stands beside ‘after a lot of discussion’ without a plural and without an article. The part is also correctly placed as an opening adverbial phrase, marked off from the main clause, and it supplies the background against which the persuasion happened.
• (c)to my point of view — ‘To my point of view’ is right as printed, and it is the part that identifies where the real error is. The phrasal verb this sentence wants — bring somebody round — governs exactly this complement: he came round to my point of view, she brought the committee round to her view. The preposition ‘to’ marks the position arrived at. A candidate who marks this part has usually sensed that something is wrong in the region of the verb and its complement and has chosen the wrong half of the pair; the half that is idiomatic is this one.
• (d)No error — ‘No error’ is not available, because the sentence contains one: the particle ‘forward’ has been used where the idiom requires ‘round’. The sentence is otherwise perfectly ordinary, and it reads without a jolt to anyone who has met ‘bring forward’ in its own senses — which is what makes it a good test item. On this kind of question the escape option should be marked only after each printed part has been examined separately, and here the second part fails on a fixed phrase rather than on grammar.

A phrasal verb is a verb plus a particle whose combined meaning cannot be worked out from the parts. The verb of motion contributes almost nothing; the particle carries the sense, and the pairing is fixed by usage. That is why phrasal verbs have to be learnt in families, and the ‘bring’ family is one of the largest.

Bring about — to cause to happen. Bring up — to rear a child, or to raise a topic. Bring out — to publish or release, or to make a quality evident. Bring round or around — to persuade someone to a view, and also to revive someone who has fainted. Bring forward — to advance a date, to propose for consideration, or to carry an amount into the next account. Bring in — to introduce a measure, or to yield revenue. Bring off — to accomplish something difficult. Bring on — to cause something unwelcome. Bring down — to reduce, or to overthrow.

Two of these, ‘bring forward’ and ‘bring in’, belong as much to the official vocabulary as to the general one, which is why they recur in papers of this kind: an item is brought forward on an agenda, a balance is brought forward in a ledger, a bill is brought in. The same particle can therefore be perfectly correct in one register and wrong in another, and the test is always the complement the phrase takes.

Key facts

• ‘Bring somebody round (or around) to a point of view’ is the fixed English phrase for persuading a person to accept an opinion; ‘bring forward’ never carries that sense.
• ‘Bring forward’ has three settled uses: to move an event to an earlier date, to propose something for consideration, and in accounts to carry an amount into the next page or period.
• The complement identifies the phrasal verb: ‘to my point of view’ belongs with come round and bring round, and ‘bring forward’ does not take it.
• ‘Argument’ is uncountable when it means debate or the process of arguing, so ‘after a lot of argument’ needs no plural and no article.
• In the ‘bring’ family the particle carries the meaning: about is to cause, up is to rear or to raise, out is to publish or reveal, off is to accomplish, on is to induce, down is to reduce or topple.
• The set at Q7 to Q9 quotes the whole sentence in the stem and reprints its three parts as options (a) to (c), with (d) ‘No error’; nothing in Part A is underlined.

Common traps

• Hunting for a grammatical fault. Nothing here breaks a rule of agreement or tense; the sentence fails on a fixed phrase, and the escape option looks attractive because of it.
• Marking ‘to my point of view’, which is the idiomatic half of the pair and the very part that shows which phrasal verb was required.
• Assuming ‘forward’ must be right because ‘bring forward’ is a real phrasal verb. It is real and it is used elsewhere in official English; it simply does not mean persuasion.
• Marking ‘after a lot of argument’ for lacking a plural, when ‘argument’ in the sense of debate is uncountable.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following parts of the sentence, “The hearing has been brought about to Monday because the auditor is leaving”, has an error?

  • (a)The hearing has been brought about
  • (b)to Monday
  • (c)because the auditor is leaving
  • (d)No error

  Answer(a) The hearing has been brought about — ‘bring about’ means to cause something to happen and cannot govern a date; moving an event to an earlier time is ‘bring forward’, so the sentence should read ‘has been brought forward to Monday’.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following phrasal verbs may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “After an hour of discussion the committee finally ____ (was persuaded) to my view”?

  • (a)came round
  • (b)came about
  • (c)came across
  • (d)came forward

  Answer(a) came round — to come round to a view is to be persuaded into accepting it. ‘Come about’ means to happen, ‘come across’ means to meet by chance or to give an impression, and ‘come forward’ means to volunteer or present oneself.