Choose the option that correctly completes the inverted narrative sentence: 'Hardly _____ at the conference hall when the keynote address commenced.'
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. had the delegation arrived
- Step 1: Negative and restrictive adverbs positioned initially (Hardly, Scarcely, Barely) require subject-auxiliary inversion. Step 2. In past correlative structures paired with 'when', the past perfect inverted form is 'had + subject + past participle'. Answer: had the delegation arrived. Why not the others: 'the delegation had arrived' is uninverted and ungrammatical initially; 'did... arrived' is double-past; 'has' mismatches past tense.
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