NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 6 of 150

Correct — D, 'No error.' The sentence is a correctly reported question. A question that is reported drops the inverted order of direct speech, and after the past-tense 'asked' the verb backshifts, so 'What has brought you here?' becomes 'what had brought him there'. Person, tense and the word for place have all been changed together, and nothing is left to correct.

• (a)I asked him — Error-free — 'ask' takes a person as its direct object with no preposition, so 'I asked him' is right and 'I asked to him' would not be.
• (b)what had brought — Error-free — 'what' is the subject of its own clause here, so the words stay in statement order and no form of 'do' is needed.
• (c)him there. — Error-free — reported speech moves 'here' to 'there' along with the shift of person and tense.

A reported question keeps statement word order, backshifts the tense after a past reporting verb, and adjusts the words that point to people, time and place.

Blocks like this one usually print at least one flawless sentence, and candidates lose the mark by hunting for a fault that is not there. Three things could have gone wrong here and none did — 'asked to him' in place of 'asked him', a stray 'did' inserted into the reported question, and 'here' left unchanged. Since none of the three has slipped, the answer is the fourth choice.

• When the question word is itself the subject of its clause, no auxiliary is added in either the direct or the reported form.
• 'Ask' takes a direct personal object — ask him, ask her — without 'to'.
• In reported speech 'here' becomes 'there', 'now' becomes 'then' and 'today' becomes 'that day'.

• Inventing a fault because one of the four choices is expected to look wrong.
• Expecting 'did' in a reported wh-question whose wh-word is the subject.

Asked as an error-spotting item — name the segment that carries the mistake, or mark 'No error.'

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Fill the blank — She asked me where I ________ the previous evening.

  • (a)have been
  • (b)had been
  • (c)was being
  • (d)am

  Answer(b) had been — after the past-tense 'asked' the verb backshifts.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which segment carries the error — (a) He asked to me / (b) why I had left / (c) the meeting early. / (d) No error

  • (a)He asked to me
  • (b)why I had left
  • (c)the meeting early.
  • (d)No error

  Answer(a) He asked to me — 'ask' takes a personal object directly, so it is 'He asked me'.