Question

As soon as the function got over. The crowd dispersed.
(Begin: Hardly had _______)

Answer 1

Hint: Both ‘as soon as’ and ‘hardly had’ describe two actions or things that happen in quick succession, leaving a very short amount of time between the two actions or the things happening.

Complete step-by-step answer:

We know the usage of ‘as soon as’ and ‘hardly had’. Hence, we can replace ‘as soon as’ with ‘hardly had’, as they both have the same meaning.
The above-given phrases are clauses. First, let’s understand about clauses:
Clauses are those sentences that have a subject and a verb to complete its meaning. They are of two types:
Independent Clauses- These clauses have a subject and a verb that express a complete thought.
Dependent Clauses- These clauses do not express a complete thought.
In the above question: We need to begin the given sentence with ‘hardly had’ by replacing ‘as soon as’. Now, as explained above we know that both ‘hardly had’ and ‘as soon as’ have the same functions. Hence, we can conclude the following points-
1)The first phrase- We know that ‘As soon as the function got over’ is a dependent clause, as it does not express a complete thought.
2)The second phrase- We know that ‘The crowd dispersed’ is an independent clause, as it expresses a complete thought.
3)We join two phrases with the help of subordinating conjunction to form a meaningful sentence.
4)Here, we can use the subordinating conjunction ‘when’, because it is used to express time.
So, the correct answer is- Hardly had the function got over when the crowd dispersed.

Note: We always use a subordinating conjunction to join an independent and dependent clause.