Question

Fill in blanks with the most suitable articles:

I saw _______ one-rupee coin lying on _______ ground.

a) a, the
b) a, no article
c) the, the
d) no article, no article

Answer 1

Hint: Articles are those words that define a noun as specific or unspecific. An article is a determiner that may indicate the specificity of reference of a noun phrase. There are three articles- a, an and the.

Complete answer:

In the given question, we have to find the appropriate articles to put in the blank before ‘one-rupee coin’ which is a common singular noun, and ‘ground’, which is another singular common noun.
Thus, since a single coin was lying which ‘I’ saw, 'a' shall be used in the first blank. 'An' will not be because ‘one’ starts with a consonant and not a vowel sound.
'The' will be used in the second blank since the speaker is referring to a particular place ‘I’ saw the coin on.
Let us analyze the options given to us in this question:
Option (a.), 'a, the', is correct as it includes the indefinite article ‘a’ for the first blank and the definite article ‘the’ for the second blank.

Option (b.), ‘a, no article', is incorrect as we need a definite article for the second blank since ‘ground’ is a particular place.

Option (c.), ‘the, the', is incorrect as we need an indefinite article ‘a’ for the first blank.

Option (d.), ‘no article required, no article required’, is incorrect as we need the indefinite article ‘a’ for the first blank and the definite article ‘the’ for the second blank.

Note: ‘A’, ‘an’ and ‘the’ are the only articles in the English language. You should keep in mind that the definite article is the word the, which limits the meaning of a noun to one particular thing. The indefinite article takes two forms. ‘A’ is used when the article precedes a word that begins with a consonant. It’s the article and when the article precedes a word that begins with a vowel.