GATE Overflow Test Series | Verbal Aptitude | Test 1 | Question: 21

Question

From among the given sentences pick the grammatically INCORRECT one:

• A. He asked a tea.
• B. He was prevented from coming.
• C. I met your mother.
• D. I haven't seen a movie for a long time.

Comments

how is option D correct?
shouldn’t it be ‘’I haven’t seen a movie since a long time’’?

is it that we use since when the specific time is given? and for when time is quantified(ex a long time, a short period)?

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Yes exactly.

Answer 1

"Tea" is not something one can ask to. It should be "He asked $\textbf{for}$ a tea".

Comments

"He asked for a tea" is still incorrect.

"a" can't be used as "tea" is uncountable

"He asked for the tea" is right

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No. The cannot come here as tea is not something specific. We use "a tea", "a coffee", "a peg" etc, where a glass of is implied and that is countable.

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We cannot use the indefinite article or numbers with uncountable nouns.

• Water (NOT a water) 
• Weather (NOT a weather) 

Same is with tea, as tea is uncountable like water we can't say "a tea" but we can say "a cup of tea".

"The" can be used with tea as there are many varieties of tea so someone may ask for a specific type of tea.

reference1: https://www.englishforums.com/English/TeaVsATea/xhlrw/post.htm

reference2:https://www.englishgrammar.org/articles-countable-uncountable-nouns/#:~:text=We%20cannot%20use%20the%20indefinite%20article%20or%20numbers%20with%20uncountable%20nouns.&text=A%20singular%20countable%20noun%20usually,an%20article%20or%20other%20determiner.

Answer 2

option (A)

Tea is an uncountable noun so we cannot use article "a" with uncountable nouns.

"a"  or "an" is used for the nouns which are countable e.g. he asked for a mango etc

Answer 3

“he asked a cup of tea”. is write sentence.

Comments

Don’t you mean “right”?😆