Identify the correct sentence out of the following:

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 4:
No sooner did the bell ring than the boys rushed out of their class.

This sentence is grammatically correct because it correctly uses the correlative conjunction "No sooner... than..." This structure is used to indicate that one event happens immediately after another. A key grammatical rule when starting a sentence with "No sooner" (or other negative adverbs like *scarcely* or *hardly*) is the requirement for *inversion*. Inversion means placing the auxiliary verb (*did* in this case) before the subject (*the bell*). The structure is: No sooner + Auxiliary Verb + Subject + Main Verb (in base form) + *than* + Second Clause (Simple Past Tense). Option 4 adheres perfectly to this structure: "No sooner **did** (auxiliary) **the bell** (subject) **ring** (base form) **than** the boys rushed out of their class."

The incorrect option is 1:
He had scarcely reached the station than it began to rain.
This sentence is incorrect because the negative adverb *scarcely* requires the correlating conjunction *when* or *before*, not *than*. The correct structure should be: "He had scarcely reached the station **when** it began to rain." Furthermore, when *scarcely* begins the sentence, it also requires inversion (e.g., "Scarcely had he reached the station when..."), although it is less strictly required when placed mid-sentence.

The incorrect option is 2:
He not only visited Mumbai, but also Pune.
This sentence is grammatically flawed due to a failure in maintaining parallel structure with the correlative conjunction "not only... but also..." This conjunction requires the words following *not only* and *but also* to be grammatically equivalent. In the provided sentence, *not only* is followed by the main verb *visited*, but *but also* is followed by the object *Pune*. To be correct, the verb should precede *not only*: "He visited **not only** Mumbai, **but also** Pune."

The incorrect option is 3:
Neither he is a rogue nor a mad man.
This sentence is incorrect because the placement of the correlative conjunctions *neither* and *nor* is misplaced. Similar to "not only... but also," the phrase must follow the principle of parallel structure, linking two grammatically similar elements. Here, *neither* precedes the subject and verb (*he is*), but *nor* precedes only a determiner and noun (*a mad man*). The correct parallel structure should place the verb *is* outside the correlative pair: "He is **neither** a rogue **nor** a mad man."