Sentence Structure and Syntax Flashcards

Choose the option that correctly completes the sentence: "Not until the final results were published ___ how badly the survey had been designed."

Answer: did the committee realise

When a sentence starts with a restrictive negative phrase such as 'Not until...', the main clause takes subject-auxiliary inversion. In the past simple, that means adding 'did' before the subject: 'did the committee realise'. Option A keeps normal word order. Option B adds emphatic 'did' but does not invert. Option D puts the verb before the subject without an auxiliary, which is not possible in modern English.

Which option correctly completes this sentence? "___ the evacuation warning, the crew might have survived the collapse."

Answer: Had they heeded

The main clause, 'might have survived', describes an imagined past result. That needs a third conditional. 'Had they heeded' is the formal inverted form of 'If they had heeded'. Option B uses the past simple, which belongs to a second conditional. 'Should' inversion (C) is used for unlikely future events and is not followed by a perfect infinitive here. 'Were they to heed' (D) refers to a hypothetical future, so it does not match the past result.

Select the grammatically correct option for formal written English: "The auditors recommended that the finance director ___ from all decisions involving the subsidiary."

Answer: recuse himself

Verbs of demand or suggestion, such as 'recommend', 'insist', 'require' and 'propose', take the mandative subjunctive in the 'that' clause. This uses the base form of the verb for every subject and every tense: 'that the finance director recuse himself'. Option A adds third-person '-s'. Option D backshifts the tense as if this were reported speech. Option C uses 'would', which is not the standard mandative structure. British English also accepts 'should recuse', but that is not one of the choices.

Choose the correct reduced relative clause: "The proposal ___ at yesterday's meeting has already been rejected by the board."

Answer: discussed

This is a shortened form of 'The proposal which was discussed at yesterday's meeting'. The proposal received the action, and the discussion is finished, so the past participle 'discussed' is correct. 'Discussing' (A) is active and would mean the proposal did the discussing. 'Being discussed' (B) suggests the discussion is still going on, which contradicts 'yesterday'. 'To be discussed' (D) refers to a discussion that has not happened yet.

Which sentence uses correlative conjunctions with correct parallel structure?

Answer: She speaks not only French but also Arabic and Farsi.

In 'not only... but also', the words after each part must be the same type of structure. In D, both parts are followed by noun objects: 'French' and 'Arabic and Farsi'. In A, 'not only' comes before a verb ('speaks') but 'but also' comes before nouns, so the pair is unbalanced. B puts 'Not only' at the start without the inversion that position requires ('Not only does she speak...'). C pairs a noun with a full clause.

Which option completes the sentence without creating a dangling modifier? "Walking into the archive, ___"

Answer: the researcher was immediately struck by the smell of old paper.

An opening participle phrase like 'Walking into the archive' refers to the subject of the main clause. Only the researcher can walk, so 'the researcher' must be the subject. Option B does this by using the passive ('was struck by'). In A and C, the subject is the smell, so the sentence says the smell walked into the archive. D uses dummy 'there', which has no logical subject for the phrase to attach to.