Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting…
2023
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct/most appropriate option.
Father would dress himself for court in a brightly coloured dhoti, a matching white shirt with an equally bright white turban and a neat black coat. The paraphernalia to court would include a cloth bundle containing court papers and a basket containing hot coffee with tumblers and plates for tiffin given by my mother or sisters-in-law.
The younger advocates of his time were great admirers of my father and used to listen to him with rapt attention whenever he rose to address the court. His arguments were forceful, coherent, cogent, compulsive and conclusive. The arguments would go on till about lunchtime and even the English judge used to take down notes of his points.
One client was particular that my father alone should argue his case. On the day my mother died, this case happened to be on the cause list. My mother was alive when my father left for court at 10 a.m. that morning and he had told my brother that he would return as soon as the case was over. Unfortunately, she died within an hour of his departure.
With some difficulty, the news was conveyed through an advocate in court. My father, however, continued his arguments without showing any emotions. Only after concluding the case did he get back home to the room where my mother’s body lay and stood in stoic silence.
‘............. a bundle containing court papers.’
The underlined word is a/an :
- A.
Adverb
- B.
Noun
- C.
Verb
- D.
Adjective
Attempted by 1 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept
The part of speech a word belongs to depends on the grammatical function it performs in a sentence, not merely on its ending or spelling. A verb expresses an action, occurrence, or state, and can appear either in a finite form that shows tense and subject agreement (for example, "contains", "contained") or in a non-finite form, such as the present participle formed by adding "-ing" to the base verb (for example, "containing"). A non-finite verb form still behaves like a verb: it can take a direct object of its own and head its own clause, even when that whole clause serves to describe a nearby noun.
Application
In the extract "…a bundle containing court papers", the target word is "containing", the present-participle form of the base verb "contain". It takes "court papers" directly as its own object — a capability that belongs to verbs — and together with that object forms the clause "containing court papers", which as a whole describes the noun "bundle" (telling us which bundle). This descriptive role of the whole clause does not change the word class of "containing" itself: within that clause, "containing" is doing the work of a verb — expressing the action of holding something and governing its object — rather than naming a thing, modifying another word's manner or degree, or attaching a quality directly to a noun the way a plain adjective would.
Cross-check
Expanding the clause into a full relative clause makes this explicit: "a bundle that contains court papers". The word occupying the same grammatical role — "contains" — is unmistakably a finite verb; "containing" is simply its non-finite counterpart used to compress the same idea into a shorter phrase, so it remains the same part of speech. This matches the CTET August 2023 Paper 1 official answer key, which records the corresponding answer choice as correct for this passage item.
Adverb: would need to modify a verb, adjective, or another adverb by indicating manner, time, place, or degree; the target word instead governs its own object and expresses an action, which an adverb cannot do.
Noun: would need to itself function as the subject, object, or complement of a clause, naming a person, place, or thing; the target word is not standing in for a thing here — it is expressing an action performed on "court papers".
Adjective: a plain adjective attaches directly to a noun to describe a quality (for example, "a heavy bundle") but cannot take an object of its own; the target word takes "court papers" as a direct object, a capability restricted to verb forms.
The target word "containing" is therefore a verb (its non-finite, present-participle form).