Question
Consider the following sentences:
(i) Everybody in the class is prepared for the exam.
(ii) Babu invited Danish to his home because he enjoys playing chess.
Which of the following is the CORRECT observation about the above two sentences?
Official answer and solution
- Official answer
- C
- From
- Official GATE 2021 answer key
Solution
Evaluate subject-verb agreement for sentence (i) and pronoun reference clarity for sentence (ii).
Sentence (i): 'Everybody in the class is prepared for the exam.' The indefinite pronoun 'Everybody' is grammatically singular and correctly takes the singular verb 'is'. Therefore, sentence (i) is grammatically correct.
Sentence (ii): 'Babu invited Danish to his home because he enjoys playing chess.' The pronoun 'he' can refer either to Babu or to Danish. Because the sentence does not clarify who enjoys playing chess, it exhibits pronoun ambiguity.
Thus, sentence (i) is grammatically correct and sentence (ii) is ambiguous, matching option C.
C
The answer is the one in the official GATE answer key. The solution is this site's own explanation.
Source
- Paper
- GATE 2021 Computer Science and Information Technology (CS, Set-1)
- Question
- 3 of 65, printed as GA Q.3
- Section
- General Aptitude
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