Question

No sooner \(\textbf{he reached home than all the villagers gathered at his home to listen to his story.} \)
 

• A. would he reach
• B. did he reach
• C. had he reached
• D. No improvement

Hint:

"No sooner" is followed by an inverted structure (auxiliary + subject). It is commonly used with past perfect, but past simple inversion may also be accepted in objective questions.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

The question involves an error in the usage of the correlative conjunction "No sooner... than..." which is often used to indicate that one event happens immediately after another. The structure demands that the verb following "no sooner" should be in the past perfect tense when the event being described happened in the simple past. However, it is a rule in English grammar to use the correct inversion form after "No sooner".

Let's analyze the given sentence: "No sooner he reached home than all the villagers gathered at his home to listen to his story."

Here is the correct usage:

• "No sooner did he reach home than all the villagers gathered at his home to listen to his story."

The correct form "No sooner did he reach home..." is in the simple past with inversion after "No sooner." This sentence structure is necessary because "no sooner" is used at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis and therefore requires inversion, meaning the auxiliary 'did' precedes the subject 'he'.

Let's evaluate the options:

• would he reach - Incorrect as it introduces conditional probability which is not intended here.
• did he reach - Correct, as it follows the inversion rule needed for "No sooner".
• had he reached - Incorrect, while it uses past perfect, it does not follow the inversion after "No sooner".
• No improvement - Incorrect since the given sentence structure does not adhere to standard English grammar rules for "No sooner".

Therefore, the correct answer is "did he reach".