NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 34 of 150

Correct — D, Q P S R. 'The clerk' is a bare subject, so the verb-and-object fragment Q ('left the money') must follow it, P ('on the desk') then says where he left it, and the relative clause S ('which he should have locked up') needs its own place phrase, which R ('in the safe') supplies — giving 'The clerk left the money on the desk which he should have locked up in the safe.'

• (a)S R Q P — It opens with 'which', a relative pronoun placed straight after 'The clerk', and a person cannot be referred to by 'which'.
• (b)Q R S P — It ends with 'locked up on the desk', which reverses the whole point of the sentence — the money was meant to go into the safe, not onto the desk.
• (c)P Q R S — It begins 'The clerk on the desk', and a person is at a desk rather than on one, so the place phrase cannot attach to the subject.

An ordering item in which a place phrase has to be attached to the right host and a verb has to keep its own place phrase.

Option (c) is the tempting one, because 'The clerk on the desk left the money in the safe which he should have locked up' reads almost smoothly. The test is whether the fragment 'on the desk' can describe a clerk, and it cannot — one sits at a desk. Once that is settled, 'on the desk' has to describe where the money was left, and 'in the safe' has to describe where it should have been locked up. The sentence the key builds is loosely put together, since 'which' stands immediately after 'the desk' although the thing that should have been locked up is the money; the ordering exercise still has exactly one arrangement in which every fragment finds a slot it can occupy.

• English says 'at the desk' for a person working there and 'on the desk' for an object resting on its surface.
• 'Lock up' is a phrasal verb that normally carries a place phrase telling where the thing is secured.

• Accepting a sequence because it reads smoothly, without checking whether each phrase can attach to the word it now sits beside.

Asked as a jumbled-word item where two place phrases have to be matched to two different hosts.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which sequence makes a correct sentence — The gardener P. in the shed Q. left the tools R. on the path S. which he ought to have stored

  • (a)Q R S P
  • (b)P Q S R
  • (c)S P Q R
  • (d)R Q P S

  Answer(a) Q R S P — the verb takes its object first, 'on the path' says where they were left, and 'in the shed' completes 'stored'.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which sequence makes a correct sentence — The typist P. which she should have filed away Q. on the shelf R. the papers S. left

  • (a)S R Q P
  • (b)R S P Q
  • (c)Q S R P
  • (d)P R S Q

  Answer(a) S R Q P — the verb and its object come first, then the place, then the relative clause.