Question

The last man on earth will abandon his house for a cave and his woven clothes for an animal's skin.
Choose the option that indicates the error in the sentence.
A) Will
B) For
C) And
D) Animal’s
E) No error

Answer 1

Hint: There are various types of errors that can occur in a sentence. They can be in the form of wrong tense, wrong punctuations or subject-verb disagreement. For e.g. What is your name. (punctuation error). He eat food. (subject verb disagreement). I am studies in my room. (tense error).

Complete answer:
The options given in the question belong to certain groups in the English grammar. ‘Will’ is a helping verb, ‘For’ is a preposition, ‘And’ is a conjunction, ‘Animal’s’ is an adjective and we must make sure that these words are used in the way that they are actually meant to. If not, the sentence shall be considered grammatically incorrect.

Let us look into the given options:
Option A) Will – The word ‘will’ is a helping verb for the main verb i.e. ‘abandon’. It indicates that the action of ‘abandoning’ will take place in the future. ‘Will’ can be correctly used for all kinds of pronouns, i.e. he will, she will, it will, etc. It is not an error in the sentence. This option is incorrect.
Option B) For – The word ‘for’ is a preposition and it indicates the relation of a noun to other parts of speech. It also indicates the purpose of something that is happening. Here it is showing the relation of the ‘house’ to the ‘cave’. It is also showing that the purpose of leaving the house is to eventually live in a cave. It is correctly used here and hence this option is also incorrect.
Option C) And – the word ‘and’ is a conjunction and is used to connect two words, phrases or clauses. In this particular question it has been used to join phrases, ‘his house for a cave’ and ‘his woven clothes for an animal’s skin’. It has been used correctly and therefore, this option is wrong.
Option D) Animal’s – The word ‘animal’ is a noun, but when we use the word ‘animal’s’ then it starts acting like a possessive adjective. A possessive adjective indicates whom the object belongs to. For e.g. My shirt, his book, her bag, uncle’s office, etc. Here it is an adjective for the skin. ‘animal’s skin’. Therefore, it is used correctly and this too is the wrong option.
Option E) No error – All the above options are incorrect as there is no error in this sentence. It is completely correct. Thus, this option is right.

Thus, the correct answer is option (E) No Error.

Note: Let us look at the other figures of speech that we can understand from the given sentence. The word ‘last’ is an adjective for the ‘man’ which is a noun. The ‘earth’ is a prepositional object as it is preceded by a preposition ‘on’. ‘His’ is also a possessive adjective just like ‘Animal’s’. The entire phrase ‘The last man on earth’ is in its entirety, acting as a subject. Hence, it is an example of a ‘noun phrase’.