He had _____ spoken for two minutes when there was a commotion in the crowd.
- (a)even
- (b)hardly
- (c)often
- (d)little
Correct — B, hardly. English pairs 'hardly' in the earlier clause with 'when' in the later one to say that one action had barely begun before another interrupted it, and the sentence already prints 'when there was a commotion'. The finished sentence is 'He had hardly spoken for two minutes when there was a commotion in the crowd.'
- (a)even — 'Had even spoken' adds emphasis to the fact of speaking but sets up no 'when' clause, leaving the two events unconnected.
- (c)often — 'Often' describes a repeated habit, which contradicts both the single stretch of two minutes and the single sudden interruption.
- (d)little — As an adverb of degree 'little' is fronted and takes inversion, as in 'Little did he know', so 'had little spoken' is not English.
An item on the correlative pair in which 'hardly' or 'scarcely' in one clause is answered by 'when' in the next.
The word 'when' at the head of the second clause is the whole clue, and it is printed before the candidate ever reaches the options. Only 'hardly' has 'when' as its partner. Watch the partner word carefully, because hardly and scarcely take 'when' while 'no sooner' takes 'than', and swapping them is the commonest mistake in this pattern.
- Hardly … when, scarcely … when and no sooner … than all say that the second event followed almost immediately.
- When the sentence opens with the adverb, the auxiliary moves ahead of the subject, as in 'Hardly had he spoken when…'.
- The earlier clause takes the past perfect, 'had spoken', and the later one the simple past.
- Writing 'no sooner … when' or 'hardly … than'.
- Forgetting the inversion when the sentence begins with the adverb.
Asked as a fill-in-the-blank or ordering item in which one half of a correlative pair is printed and the other must be supplied.
Hardly had my brother descended from the plane P. when the people Q. waved and cheered R. who had come to receive him S. from the lounge The proper sequence should be
- (a) P Q R S
- (b) R S P Q
- (c) R P Q S
- (d) P R S Q
Answer(d) P R S Q
The same correlative pair set as an ordering item. 'Hardly' is printed in the opening line and the piece beginning 'when' has to follow it, which is exactly the pairing this blank tests.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word that fits — No sooner had the bell rung _____ the children rushed out.
- (a)when
- (b)then
- (c)than
- (d)that
Answer(c) than — 'no sooner' takes 'than', while 'hardly' and 'scarcely' take 'when'.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word that fits — Scarcely had we sat down _____ the lights went out.
- (a)than
- (b)when
- (c)then
- (d)as
Answer(b) when — 'scarcely' is answered by 'when'.