NDA (I) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 33 of 149

Correct — B, I have. When a negative adverb such as 'never' is moved to the front of a sentence, the subject and the auxiliary must swap places. The segment should read 'have I', giving 'Never have I seen such a town.'

• (a)Never — Fronting 'never' is a legitimate emphatic device; the fault is not the adverb itself but the ordinary word order that follows it.
• (c)seen such a town — The past participle correctly follows the auxiliary 'have', and 'such a' is the right form before a singular countable noun.
• (d)No error — There is an error, since a fronted negative adverb without subject-auxiliary inversion is ungrammatical.

An inversion item — fronting a negative or restrictive adverbial forces the auxiliary in front of the subject.

• Never, seldom, rarely, hardly, scarcely, little, nowhere and 'not only' all trigger inversion when fronted.
• If there is no auxiliary, a form of 'do' is supplied, as in 'Never did I imagine this'.

• Keeping the normal subject-verb order after moving a negative word to the front.

Asked as a spotting-errors item in which a fronted negative adverb is followed by uninverted word order.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which segment contains the error — Rarely / we have / seen such courage. / No error.

  • (a)Rarely
  • (b)we have
  • (c)seen such courage
  • (d)No error

  Answer(b) we have — a fronted 'rarely' requires 'have we'.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which segment contains the error — Not only he came late / but he also / forgot the file. / No error.

  • (a)Not only he came late
  • (b)but he also
  • (c)forgot the file
  • (d)No error

  Answer(a) Not only he came late — fronted 'not only' needs 'did he come late'.