EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 14 of 120

Correct — A, (a) knows. The blank is a collocation slot. English has a fixed way of saying that something is without limit — it ‘knows no limits’, or, more often still, it ‘knows no bounds’. Her enthusiasm knew no bounds; his ambition knows no limits. The verb ‘know’ is doing nothing like its ordinary work of having information; in this frame it means recognises or acknowledges, so that ambition ‘knows no limits’ is ambition that acknowledges no boundary to itself. Meaning confirms what the collocation proposes. The sentence opens ‘Human history is ample proof that…’, which announces a large claim about human beings that the record of centuries is said to demonstrate. The only claim of that size among the four fillers is that ambition is boundless. Filling the blank with ‘knows’ produces exactly that: human history proves that human ambition acknowledges no limit. It is worth noticing how the negative works. The idiom carries its negation in the object — no limits, no bounds — rather than in the verb, and English has a family of such expressions: spare no effort, leave no stone unturned, take no chances, make no bones about it, show no mercy. In each the verb is affirmative and the negative sits on the noun. A candidate who reads the frame as ‘verb plus no plus noun’ and then asks which verb English uses in it will arrive at ‘knows’ quickly, and will not be delayed by options that are merely grammatical.

• (b)keeps — ‘keeps’ produces ‘human ambition keeps no limits’, which is not a collocation English has. The verb does appear with ‘limits’, but in a different frame and with the opposite drift: to keep within limits, to keep expenditure within limits, to keep to a limit. Those all describe restraint being observed. ‘Keeps no limits’ tries to negate that by attaching ‘no’ to the object, and the phrase simply does not exist; nothing in the language licenses it.
• (c)crosses — ‘crosses’ is grammatical and is the most damaging option on the item, because it produces a sentence that means the reverse of what the frame demands. ‘Human ambition crosses no limits’ says that ambition never oversteps a boundary — that it is restrained. Read it back into the opening words and the sentence claims that the whole record of human history is ample proof of human self-restraint, which is not a claim anybody sets out to make in this form. Choosing (c) is a good example of picking a filler that parses without reading the completed sentence for sense.
• (d)marks — ‘marks’ does not fit either the idiom or the sense. To mark a limit is to indicate or denote where a boundary lies — the fence marks the limit of the property — so ‘ambition marks no limits’ would say that ambition fails to indicate any boundary, which is not a thing ambition could be expected to do and is not what the sentence is claiming. The verb also has no idiomatic pairing with ‘no limits’ in the way ‘know’ has.

Collocation is the habit by which particular words keep company with particular other words, and it is not derivable from meaning. You make a decision but take a decision as well, do homework but make an effort, pay attention but give thought, commit an offence but perpetrate a fraud. A learner who reasons from sense alone will produce phrases that are intelligible and wrong, and error-spotting and cloze items are built on exactly that gap. The frame in this item — a verb plus a negated object — is a recognisable sub-family, and its members are worth learning together because the examiner draws on them repeatedly: know no bounds, know no limits — be without limit; spare no effort, spare no pains — do everything possible; leave no stone unturned — try every means; take no chances — avoid all risk; make no bones about — state plainly, without hesitation; show no mercy, give no quarter — be relentless; have no truck with — refuse to deal with. In each of these the verb is affirmative and the negation is carried by the object. Recognising the frame is often faster than recognising the whole phrase: once you see ‘________ no limits’, the question becomes which verb the language puts in that slot, and there is only one.

Q14 is the fourth item of the cloze set and prints only its sentence; the Directions block governing Q11 to Q15 stands above Q11. With Q13 it forms the vocabulary half of the set, where the choice turns on what English says rather than on what the grammar permits. The item is instructive because three of the four options are grammatical. ‘Crosses no limits’ and ‘marks no limits’ both parse, and one of them even sounds weighty. What separates them is a two-stage test the whole set rewards: first, is this what English says ? and second, does the completed sentence say something the opening words can support ? The frame here — ‘Human history is ample proof that…’ — is a strong constraint on meaning, because a proof drawn from all of human history has to be a large and unflattering generalisation, not a claim about restraint. Reading the finished sentence back from the beginning, once, catches the reversal in option (c) immediately.

• ‘Know no limits’ and ‘know no bounds’ are fixed expressions meaning to be without limit; in them ‘know’ means acknowledge or recognise, not have information about.
• English carries the negation of these idioms on the object rather than the verb — spare no effort, leave no stone unturned, take no chances, make no bones about.
• ‘Keep’ collocates with limits only in the frame ‘keep within limits’ or ‘keep to a limit’, which expresses restraint.
• ‘Cross a limit’ means to overstep it, so ‘crosses no limits’ asserts restraint and reverses the sense the sentence requires.
• ‘Mark a limit’ means to indicate where a boundary lies, a sense unrelated to what the sentence is claiming about ambition.

• Choosing an option that parses without reading the finished sentence from the start. ‘Crosses no limits’ is grammatical and says the opposite of what the sentence needs.
• Reasoning from meaning towards a collocation. English does not derive its fixed pairings from sense, and a well-reasoned substitute is still wrong.
• Assuming a familiar verb must be usable in a familiar frame. ‘Keep’ goes with limits only in ‘keep within limits’.
• Overlooking that the negation in this idiom sits on the noun, which makes ‘knows no limits’ look at first like an affirmative statement about knowledge.

Vocabulary items in this cloze set are built by removing one word from a fixed expression and offering three plausible verbs beside the right one. At least one of the wrong options is usually a verb that produces the opposite meaning, since that catches candidates who check grammar and stop. The preparation that pays is a list of collocations learnt as whole phrases, together with the discipline of reading the completed sentence back once before marking.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Select the most appropriate option for the blank : The inquiry committee ________ no stone unturned in tracing the origin of the leaked circular.

  • (a)kept
  • (b)left
  • (c)placed
  • (d)held

  Answer(b) left — the idiom is ‘leave no stone unturned’, meaning to try every possible means. The other three verbs are all ordinary English with stones and none of them enters this fixed expression, which cannot be rebuilt with a synonym.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Select the most appropriate option for the blank : Once the deadline was advanced by a fortnight, the department ________ no effort to get the returns filed on time.

  • (a)spared
  • (b)saved
  • (c)kept
  • (d)avoided

  Answer(a) spared — ‘spare no effort’ means to do everything possible, with the negation carried by the object. ‘Saved no effort’ and ‘kept no effort’ are not English, and ‘avoided no effort’ turns a fixed phrase into a double negative that says nothing.