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Question

Difficulty: MediumAdjectives, Adverbs, and Modifiers

Which of the following options correctly completes the sentence below?

'Scarcely had the pilot grounded the aircraft ________ the severe thunderstorm struck the airfield.'

  1. whenAnswer
  2. B
    than
  3. C
    then
  4. D
    that

Answer

The word 'when' correctly completes the sentence because the negative adverbial modifier 'scarcely' standardly pairs with 'when'.
The introductory adverb 'scarcely' requires the conjunction 'when' to introduce the clause that immediately follows. In formal English, negative limiters like 'scarcely', 'hardly', and 'barely' trigger subject-auxiliary inversion in the main clause and must correlate with 'when'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the sentence structure starting with an inverted negative adverb ('Scarcely had...').
Identify that 'scarcely' initiates an inverted clause describing an event immediately preceding another.
Initial negative adverbs such as 'scarcely', 'hardly', and 'barely' require specific correlative conjunctions to join the subsequent time clause.
2
Apply the rule of correlative adverbial pairs.
Pair 'scarcely' with 'when'.
Standard English grammatical convention dictates that 'scarcely' and 'hardly' take 'when' (or 'before'), whereas 'no sooner' takes 'than'.

Key Concept

Correlative Adverbial Modifiers and Inverted Clause Structures
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Topics

Adjectives, Adverbs, and Modifiers

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