NDA (II) 2024 General Ability Test · Question 7 of 141

Correct — B, both. The blank sits before 'the plants and animals' — two groups joined by 'and' — so the correlative 'both' fits naturally: 'both the plants and animals'. 'Both' can precede 'the' and it neatly pairs the two nouns as jointly subject to natural selection. The other choices break the sentence: 'the' would double the article ('the the plants'), 'some' cannot stand before 'the', and 'among' would turn the phrase into an adverbial ('among the plants and animals'), leaving the clause 'are continuously subjected …' without a subject.

• (a)the — 'The' would collide with the article already in 'the plants and animals', giving the ungrammatical 'the the plants'.
• (c)some — 'Some' cannot be placed directly before 'the' ('some the plants' is ungrammatical) and it also weakens the passage's point that all of nature faces natural selection.
• (d)among — 'Among the plants and animals' becomes a prepositional phrase, so the clause loses its subject and 'are continuously subjected' has nothing to attach to.

Cloze / correlative item: 'both … and' pairs the two nouns 'plants and animals'; 'both' is the only option that can stand before 'the' and give the clause a grammatical subject.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Fill in the blank: ______ the teacher and the students attended the seminar.

  • (a)Either
  • (b)Both
  • (c)Neither
  • (d)Each

  Answer(b) Both — 'both … and' correctly pairs the two subjects joined by 'and'.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Choose the correct option: She is fluent in ______ French and German.

  • (a)either
  • (b)both
  • (c)neither
  • (d)whether

  Answer(b) both — the correlative 'both … and' links the two languages.