Question

Fill in the blank with the appropriate subordinate clause:
The road laid barren as if _______________.
a. It was deserted.
b. It has been deserted.
c. It would have been deserted.
d. None of these

Answer 1

Hint: Ensure that the tense of the main clause and the subordinate clause match each other.

Complete step-by-step answer:

  Clauses are groups of words with their own subject and predicate. There are two types of clauses. They are the Main Clause and the Subordinate Clause. The main clause is the independent part of the sentence. Such clauses have their own meaning and they don’t depend on any other part of the sentence for meaning.
The subordinate clause is also known as the dependent clause. This is because it depends on the main clause to mean something. Without the main clause, the dependent clause would start abruptly and not make any sense. Subordinate clauses may be categorized into types like noun clauses, adjective clause,s and adverb clauses.
Let us consider the question given above- The road laid barren as if _______________.
Here, ‘the road laid barren’, is the main clause as it makes sense by itself. The following subordinate conjunction ‘as if’ gives us a comparison as to how the road was deserted. This means that it is a subordinate adverb clause of manner.
We also have to make the tense of the main clause match the tense of the subordinate clause. As the main clause is in the simple past tense, the subordinate clause also has to be in the simple past tense. Therefore, option ‘a’ it was deserted is the correct answer.

Note: Students may mistake the other options to be right if they don’t pay attention to the main clause’s tense.