Question

Read the sentence to find out whether there is any grammatical error in it. The error, if any, will be in one part of the sentence. The letter of that part is the answer. If there is no error, the answer is ‘D’. (Ignore the errors of punctuation, if any).
a) Will you lend me
b) little money
c) to tide over this crisis.
d) No error.

Answer 1

Hint:The subject, verb, and object should all match with each other. The plurality of the verb should also align with the given subject. Check the articles of the given articles and whether any are missing.

Complete answer:
In order to find the error in the given sentence, we must first understand how sentences are constructed. We must identify the different parts of speech in the given sentence.

The most basic construction in English is ‘subject + verb + object’. However, it becomes more complicated when other parts of speech come into play. We can add describing words such as adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. Adjectives are usually placed before a noun and adverbs are usually placed before an adjective or verb. The articles should be placed in appropriate places, as required.

Let’s look at the given sentence: ‘Will you lend me little money to tide over this crisis’. There is no error in the subject, as the verb matches the subject in the given phrase. There are no articles in the given sentence. The adjective ‘little’ when used on its own with a noun, takes on a different meaning when it is referring to a quantity. There is a difference between ‘little rain’ and ‘a little rain’. The former means that there was hardly any rain, and the latter means that there was some rain.

Now, we know what we are looking for. Let’s look at the given options:

a) Will you lend me - This construction is entirely correct. The verb matches the subject. It is in the interrogative form. There is no error here. So, this is an incorrect option.
b) little money - This phrase is incorrect in the context of the given sentence. There should be an article before this phrase. This is the required answer. So, this is the correct option.
c) to tide over this crisis. - This is the correct use of this idiom. This construction is also correct. There should be a question mark at the end of this, but we are given instructions to ignore incorrect punctuation. So, this is an incorrect option.
d) no error - This is an incorrect option as we have already found the error from the given options.

Note:
Dissect the sentence and go through parts of the sentence separately, and see if there are any errors to be worth noting. Then, choose the appropriate option accordingly.