NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 35 of 150

Correct — D, P R S Q. 'Hardly had…' is half of a fixed pair and must be completed by 'when', so P comes first; 'the people' at the end of P immediately takes its relative clause R ('who had come to receive him') with S ('from the lounge') telling where they had come from; and Q ('waved and cheered') is the verb of 'the people', so it can only come once that whole subject phrase is finished — giving 'Hardly had my brother descended from the plane when the people who had come to receive him from the lounge waved and cheered.'

• (a)P Q R S — It puts the verb straight after 'the people' and leaves the relative clause trailing behind it, so 'who had come to receive him' is cut off from the noun it describes.
• (b)R S P Q — It opens with 'who', a relative pronoun with no noun before it, and it delays 'when' so long that the 'Hardly had…' pattern is broken.
• (c)R P Q S — It has the same opening fault of a relative pronoun with nothing to describe, and it also strands 'from the lounge' at the very end.

An ordering item anchored by a correlative pair, with a relative clause that has to stay beside its noun.

The opening line is already inverted — 'Hardly had my brother descended' rather than 'My brother had hardly descended' — which is the signal that the sentence is running on a fixed pattern. That pattern is 'Hardly had … when …', so the fragment beginning with 'when' has to come first and options (b) and (c) fall at once. What remains is a choice about where the verb goes, and the rule that a relative clause sits next to the noun it describes settles it.

• 'Hardly … when' and 'Scarcely … when' pair together, while 'No sooner … than' takes 'than' instead of 'when'.
• When a sentence opens with 'Hardly', 'Scarcely', 'Seldom' or 'No sooner', the auxiliary moves in front of the subject.

• Completing 'Hardly had…' with 'than' instead of 'when'.
• Letting the main verb jump ahead of the relative clause that belongs to its subject.

Asked as a jumbled-word item whose opening line already names the pattern, so one fragment is fixed before any option is read.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which sequence makes a correct sentence — No sooner had the bell rung P. than the children Q. rushed out R. who had been waiting all morning S. into the field

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

  Answer(a) P R Q S — 'No sooner' is completed by 'than', and the relative clause stays with 'the children' before the verb arrives.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which sequence makes a correct sentence — Scarcely had the train stopped P. jumped down Q. when the passengers R. on to the platform S. who had been standing at the door

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

  Answer(a) Q S P R — 'Scarcely' calls for 'when', the relative clause follows its noun, and the verb closes the sentence.