Question

Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate option:
If she ___ a new dress I ____ her then.
A) Hadn’t been wearing/ might have recognized.
B) Didn’t wear/ might recognise.
C) Wasn’t wearing/ might recognise.
D) Wouldn’t wear/ would recognise.
E) Hadn’t been wearing/ might recognise.

Answer 1

Hint: First of all, we have to recognize the tense of the sentence. In the sentence If she ___ a new dress I ____ her then. The main focus of the tense is on events that happened in the past. So past tense is to be used.

Complete answer:
Now let us look into the given options:
Option A – Hadn’t been wearing/ might have recognized.
The sentence formed is “If she hadn’t been wearing a new dress I might have recognized her then”.
The past perfect continuous tense (hadn’t been wearing) is properly used. The word ‘have’ has been used with ‘might’ thus using it in the past tense. Thus, the whole sentence is in the past tense and is correct.

Option B – Didn’t wear/ might recognise. This option is incorrect because the first half of the given option is in the past tense ‘didn’t wear’, but the second half of the answer is simple future tense, ‘might recognize’. For the sentence to be correct both halves should have been in the same tense.

Option C – Wasn’t wearing/ might recognise. This option is incorrect because again the former part of the option is in the past tense, while the latter part of the option is in the simple future which would make the sentence thus framed, wrong.

Option D – Wouldn’t wear/ would recognise. With this option the whole sentence will be framed into future tense. This sentence would not be grammatically incorrect but it is also not the most appropriate sentence to be formed in comparison to Option A.

Option E - Hadn’t been wearing/ might recognise. The first part is a past perfect continuous tense form of a verb and the second part is a simple future tense. Although the former part of the sentence is correct, the latter one when put in place, makes the sentence framed completely wrong as it is not consistent with the tense of the sentence. (as was the case in Option A).

The use of ‘might’ is also very important in this case, because if we use ‘might’ alone then the sentence is in future tense and is incorrect. But by adding ‘have’ after ‘might’ we change it into past tense.

Thus, the correct answer is Option (A) hadn’t been wearing/might have recognized.

Note:
i) The past perfect continuous tense is to be properly used while answering this question.
ii) The past perfect continuous tense (also known as the past perfect progressive tense) shows that an action that started in the past continued up until another time in the past.
iii) The past perfect continuous tense is constructed using had been + the verb’s present participle (root + -ing).