No sooner ______ the executive briefing than journalists began asking pointed questions about the offshore accounts.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. had the minister concluded
- Step 1: The correlative structure 'no sooner... than' requires subject-auxiliary inversion in the introductory clause. The past perfect auxiliary 'had' must precede the subject, establishing anteriority to the 'than' clause. Answer: had the minister concluded. Why not the others: "did the minister conclude his formal briefing" uses past simple instead of past perfect, which disrupts standard correlative anteriority; "the minister concluded" fails to invert the auxiliary and subject after initial restrictive negative adverb 'no sooner'; "has the minister spoken" uses present perfect which conflicts with the narrative past tense in the main clause.
Practise more Advanced Inversion and Subjunctive Mood.
Free questions with an explanation for every one, and full timed State Certificate of Language Proficiency (KPG) English mock tests.
More Advanced Inversion and Subjunctive Mood questions
- At no time during the cross-examination ______ that he had met the co-conspirator prior to the summit.
- It is imperative that the research team ______ the safety protocol before handling biohazardous specimens.
- Were the European Union ______ carbon tariffs on heavy industrial imports, global trade patterns would shift dramatically.
- The archaeological discovery is considered ______ the earliest known evidence of domestic pottery in the region.
- Not until the statistical analysis was re-evaluated ______ the significant margin of error in the clinical data.
- It was the chief engineer's swift intervention ______ a catastrophic explosion at the refinery.