Question

Fill in the blank with the correct option
She was bankrupt. She had ______ money.
little
A little
few
A few

Answer 1

Hint:
 A determiner (specifically a quantifier) is to be used in the given question. If the object is countable, we use few and if the object is uncountable we use little.

Complete answer:
 Determiners are words that specify the quantity of the noun or clarifies what the noun is referring to. In this question, we are specifically dealing with quantifiers that specify the quantity of the noun. Examples: a little, a few, etc.
Let us look at the given options.
(a) little- It is the right answer because though money is countable, we don't understand from the given sentence exactly how much money is there. So as per the given sentence, money is uncountable. Thus we use little.
(b) A little- It is wrong because there is no need for an article here. Money is not one thing, it's a bunch of certain denominations of money. It's in the plural form. “A little” is used in a positive context, that it is greater than zero while just “little” is used in a negative sense, that it is less than “much”.
(c) few- The formula is few + countable. Money is not countable in the sentence. So we cannot use a few. It is wrong.
(d) A few- “A few” indicates that “money” is countable. However, in the given sentence, since we aren’t told how much money she has, “money” shall be treated as an uncountable noun. We cannot use "a" in the sentence before the adjective of quantity because money is not singular but plural. Thus, option d is also wrong.
Hence the correct answer is option a.

Note:
Some quantifiers are used both with countable and uncountable nouns such as “a lot of”. We use “a lot of”: A lot of oil (uncountable), a lot of chocolates (countable). While most of the formulae for quantifiers are simple, sometimes it depends on the context of the sentence so read the question carefully.