Question

Sarah: Hey! What happened? Why are you feeling sick?
Sumit: I ate too much last night. If I hadn’t eaten the hamburger, I ___________ fallen sick.
Fill in the blank.
A) May not have
B) Shouldn’t have
C) Wouldn’t have
D) Couldn’t have

Answer 1

Hint: Tenses are used to indicate time reference, continuation or completeness of a sentence. The concept of tenses with reference to time is past tense, present tense and future tense. For example, She ate food; She is eating food; she will be eating food.

Complete answer:
To answer this question, it is very important to understand which tense to be used correctly. For the correct sense in the sentence, we will be using past perfect tense. The past perfect tense is used to indicate an action that had happened at some point in the past.

Let us analyze the given options:
Option A) May not have – ‘may not have’ states something that is impossible to happen. However, there is no such impossibility of the action. Therefore, this is an incorrect answer to use in the blank as it will change the real meaning of the sentence.

Option B) Shouldn’t have – shouldn’t have means should not have. We use shouldn’t have when there is an obligation to do something. Thus, this is an incorrect answer because we will use the past perfect tense to fill the blank. However, shouldn’t have can be used in the past tense. For example, You shouldn’t have gone there.

Option C) Wouldn’t have – is the correct answer because it fits in the blank grammatically correct. Wouldn’t have means would not have; not allow; refuse to tolerate. Would is the past tense of will. As per the sentence given in the question, if Sumit had not eaten the hamburger then he would not have fallen sick. This is the correct answer.

Option D) Couldn’t have – couldn’t have means could not have and something is impossible in the past. However, there is no such situation of impossibility. However, using this word in the blank will make the sentence grammatically incorrect and does not make sense in the sentence. Thus, this is an incorrect answer.

Sarah: Hey! What happened? Why are you feeling sick?
Sumit: I ate too much last night. If I hadn’t eaten the hamburger, I wouldn’t have fallen sick.

Therefore the correct answer is option ‘C’.

Note: As we know, past perfect tense is used to show action before another action happened in the same sentence. So, the rule of the past perfect tense is:
Subject + had + past participle = past perfect tense.
For example: Before I went home, He had taken a test.