Select the most appropriate option that can substitute the underlined segment in the given sentence. No sooner did Mr. Piyahri Mishra finish his chemistry lecture that the students began to leave.
- (a)than the students began to leave.
- (b)then the students began to leave.
- (c)so the students began to leave.
- (d)and the students began to leave.
Answer
Why
Correct — A. The trigger is No sooner. Sooner is the comparative of soon, and an English comparative is completed by than, never by then.
So the fixed pair is no sooner ... than. The paper prints the connector that in its place, and that is the error the underline marks.
The rest of the stretch is already right: after a fronted negative the auxiliary moves ahead of the subject, which the paper has as did Mr. Piyahri Mishra finish. Replace the connector alone — option (a).
Why the others are wrong
- (b)then the students began to leave. — Then is an adverb of time or a sequencer, not a comparative connector. The than/then swap is the exact confusion this item is built on, and it is the trap most often taken.
- (c)so the students began to leave. — So introduces a result or a purpose. No sooner opens a comparison of time and leaves than waiting to be filled, and a result marker cannot fill it.
- (d)and the students began to leave. — And merely joins two clauses of equal weight. It loses the immediacy the construction carries, that the second event followed the instant the first ended.
Concept
No sooner ... than is a correlative pair: the first half demands the second, the way hardly and scarcely demand when.
Two things are happening in such a sentence at once.
The comparative sooner forces than. The fronted negative forces inversion, so the auxiliary jumps in front of the subject: No sooner did he finish than the students began to leave.
The clause after than then returns to ordinary word order.
Hardly had he arrived when the phone rang is the parallel construction with the other correlative. Mixing the two, as in hardly ... than, is a separate error worth guarding against.
Key facts
- No sooner is completed by than, because sooner is a comparative form.
- Hardly and scarcely are completed by when, not than.
- A sentence opening with a negative adverbial inverts subject and auxiliary, as in No sooner did he finish.
Study next
Common traps
- Hearing than and then as the same sound and picking whichever looks familiar
- Inverting the second clause as well, when it stays in normal order after than
- Reading the item as a vocabulary question and ignoring the comparative
Substitution of an underlined segment is a standing SSC format, and it returns in this paper at English Q.16, where the underlined stretch is an idiom rather than a connector. The same instinct is tested in error-spotting form at English Q.6 and Q.8.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.