The following sentence has been divided into four segments. Identify the segment that contains an adverbial usage error. Mr. Arun / will pay dear / for his / financial mistake.
- (a)Mr. Arun
- (b)financial mistake
- (c)for his
- (d)will pay dear
Answer
Why
Correct — D. The stem names the error type — adverbial — so look for the segment in which something modifies a verb.
That segment is will pay dear. Here dear modifies the verb pay, but dear is an adjective (a dear friend, a dear price). What modifies a verb is an adverb, so the sentence needs will pay dearly, meaning to suffer heavily for something.
The remaining segments contain no modifier of a verb at all: a subject noun phrase, a preposition with a possessive, and an adjective attached to its own noun. Option (d) is the segment.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)Mr. Arun — Mr. Arun is the subject noun phrase — a title and a proper noun. It contains nothing that modifies a verb, so no adverbial rule can be broken inside it.
- (b)financial mistake — In financial mistake, financial is an adjective modifying the noun mistake. That is adjectival usage and it is correct; the stem asks specifically for an adverbial error.
- (c)for his — for his is a preposition plus a possessive adjective, introducing the noun phrase that follows. There is no verb here and nothing modifying one.
Concept
Adjectives modify nouns; adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. English keeps several pairs where the two forms look alike and are not interchangeable — dear and dearly, hard and hardly, late and lately, near and nearly.
When a stem says the error is adverbial, it is telling you the wrong form of such a pair has been put where a verb needed modifying. Find the verb first, then check what is leaning on it.
Dear does survive as a flat adverb in older and literary English — it cost him dear — and dictionaries record that use as archaic or literary. SSC is testing current standard usage, in which a verb takes dearly.
Key facts
- To pay dearly means to suffer heavily as a consequence of something.
- Dear used as an adverb, as in buy dear or sell dear, is recorded but archaic or literary today.
- Pairs such as hard and hardly or late and lately differ in meaning, not only in form.
Study next
Common traps
- Scanning for a wrong tense or a wrong preposition after the stem has already told you the error is adverbial.
- Accepting will pay dear because the phrase is familiar from older writing.
SSC runs the divided-sentence format both with the error type named, as here, and with no type given at all. The same shift asks the untyped version at English Q.20, where the faulty segment is I has worked there as a manager.
The adverb-versus-adjective decision itself also drives 17 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.19, where how hard work you must become hard you work and hardly you work is offered as the decoy.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.