Question

Choose the option that points out sentence(s) with grammatical error(s).

(i) I love the man dancing on the table.
(ii) I love the man's dancing on the table.
(iii) In 1986 Elie Wiesel was named the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, an honour established by Alfred Nobel.
(iv) Neither of the recommendations works as well as we thought they would.
(v) Either the Minister or the Minister's wife will have to excuse themselves from the reception to speak to the caterer.

• A. (iii) and (v)
• B. (i) and (iv)
• C. (ii) and (v)
• D. (iii) and (iv)

Hint:

Check what each appositive actually renames, and for "either...or"/"neither...nor" match the verb and pronoun to the nearer subject, not to the whole pair.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

This question asks you to check five sentences one at a time and pick the two that break a grammar rule. Go through each sentence and ask what job every word is doing.

1. (i) I love the man dancing on the table. Here "dancing" is a present participle working as an adjective. It tells you which man is meant, the one who is dancing. This is a normal and correct sentence, so it has no error.
2. (ii) I love the man's dancing on the table. Here "dancing" is a gerund, a verb form acting as a noun, and "the man's" is a possessive that modifies this noun, the same pattern as "I love his dancing." This is also correct, so it has no error.
3. (iii) In 1986 Elie Wiesel was named the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, an honour established by Alfred Nobel. The phrase "an honour established by Alfred Nobel" is an appositive, and an appositive must rename the noun that sits right in front of it. Here that noun is "recipient", so the sentence literally says the recipient is an honour established by Nobel, which makes no sense. The honour is the Prize, not the person who won it. This is a misplaced modifier, a real grammatical error.
4. (iv) Neither of the recommendations works as well as we thought they would. "Neither" is singular, so the singular verb "works" is correct. The word "they" later in the sentence points back to "the recommendations", the plural noun sitting inside the "of" phrase, not to "Neither" itself. Since "they" correctly matches a plural noun that is actually present in the sentence, there is no agreement error here.
5. (v) Either the Minister or the Minister's wife will have to excuse themselves from the reception to speak to the caterer. With "either...or", the verb and any pronoun that follows must agree with the closer subject, which is "the Minister's wife", a single woman. "Themselves" is plural, so it does not match. The correct word here would be "herself". This is a pronoun-antecedent agreement error.

So the two sentences that actually break a grammar rule are (iii), because of the misplaced appositive, and (v), because of the wrong plural pronoun. That is option 1.

Let's summarize:

• An appositive must sit next to, and rename, the exact noun it describes; in (iii) it wrongly renames "recipient" instead of the Prize.
• With "either...or" and "neither...nor", the verb and pronoun agree with the nearer subject; in (v) that subject is singular, so "themselves" is wrong.
• (i), (ii) and (iv) each follow a standard, correct grammatical pattern and contain no error.

The correct choice is option 1, (iii) and (v).