The correct answer is option (A):
scarcely entered when
The original sentence is "He had not scarcely entered when I shouted". The underlined part is "not scarcely entered when". We need to find the correct phrasing.
Let's analyze the words "hardly" and "scarcely". These are negative adverbs. When a sentence contains a negative adverb like "hardly" or "scarcely", we generally do not use another negative word like "not" with it. This is because using two negatives can create ambiguity or an unintended positive meaning.
Consider the phrase "not scarcely". This literally means "not not often" or "often", which is the opposite of the intended meaning. The intended meaning is that he had barely entered, or it was a very short time after he entered.
Therefore, we should remove the "not" when using "scarcely". The structure "scarcely... when" is a common correlative conjunction used to show that one event happened immediately after another.
Now let's look at the options:
1. "scarcely entered when": This option removes the "not" and uses the correct correlative conjunction "scarcely... when". This fits the intended meaning and grammatical structure.
2. "scarcely entered than": "Scarcely" is typically followed by "when" or "before", not "than". The structure "scarcely... than" is incorrect.
3. "not hardly entered when": Similar to "not scarcely", using "not hardly" is also redundant and grammatically incorrect. "Hardly" is a negative adverb and should not be preceded by "not".
4. "scarcely enters": This option changes the verb tense from past perfect ("had entered") to simple present ("enters"). The original sentence describes an event that happened in the past and was completed before another past event. Therefore, the past perfect tense is appropriate here.
Based on this analysis, "scarcely entered when" is the correct replacement for "not scarcely entered when" because it removes the redundant negative "not" and uses the correct correlative conjunction "scarcely...when" with the appropriate verb tense. The corrected sentence would be "He had scarcely entered when I shouted."