Identify the underlined portion that violates standard negative inversion syntax:
Scarcely (A) the regulatory committee had approved (B) the novel vaccine candidate when (C) unanticipated autoimmune side effects emerged (D).
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. (B) the regulatory committee had approved
Answer: (B) the regulatory committee had approved. Why not the others: (A) 'Scarcely' is a standard initial adverbial; (C) 'when' is the correct correlative conjunction pairing with 'Scarcely'; (D) 'emerged' is the correct past tense verb.
- Step 1: Observe the sentence-initial restrictive adverbial 'Scarcely' in part (A). Fronted negative and restrictive adverbs obligatorily trigger auxiliary-subject inversion.
- Step 2: Part (B) maintains non-inverted declarative order ('the regulatory committee had approved') instead of the mandatory inverted order ('had the regulatory committee approved').
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