GATE CSE 2016 | Set 2 | GA | Question: 01

Question

The man who is now Municipal Commissioner worked as ________________.

• A. the security guard at a university
• B. a security guard at the university
• C. a security guard at university
• D. the security guard at the university

Comments

I think the answer should be A.

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1. "A University" (General)

Use "a" when you are introducing a university for the very first time, or when it doesn't matter which specific university it is.

• Example: "She wants to study at a university in London." (Any university there will do; she hasn't picked one yet).

• In your exam question: "He worked as a security guard at a university." (The sentence doesn't care which specific college it was; it's just stating the type of place he worked).

2. "The University" (Specific)

Use "the" when both you and the listener already know exactly which specific university is being discussed.

• Example: "I visited Stanford last week. The university has a beautiful campus." (We use "the" because we already know you mean Stanford).

• Another Example: "My mom works at the university down the street." (Specific to the one near your house).

To use "the university," the sentence would need to establish the specific location first. For example:

"The man who is now Municipal Commissioner used to live in Oxford. He worked as a security guard at the university."

(Now we use the because "the university" clearly points back to Oxford).

Without that extra context, the grammar rule says: if the reader doesn't know the exact name of the place, treat it as general and use "a."

Answer 1

University considered as an organization that’s why article the used before university.
And Post of security is a general post, so article a has been used for security guard.

So, option (B) is true.

Comments

Hello Akash

Try to contribute your own solution rather copying it.Copy/paste is not supposed to be a good idea,right?

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/gate-cs-2016-set-2-gq/

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some time it seems you already know the answer and try to frame the logic/rules

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@jlimbasiya that's true.

Answer 2

I think the answer should be A. It is not mentioned which university the author is talking about.As the university in question is not referenced beforehand, the definite article "THE" cannot be used before "university". But "the" can be used before security guard,because we know that he was "the" security guard at some given university. Though ANSWER B sounds correct, I think the more appropriate answer is A. And there is no logical explanation as to why A should be wrong either .

Comments

Why not option c??

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C will not be correct because there is no article before university..All answer keys are showing b as the correct answer...so.Perhaps my answer may not be valid

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multiple security guards can be at a University. "The" would be appropriate for say "Principal".

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@Arjun Sir

, his explanation regarding why "the" should not be used before the word university is also correct right??

Because it is not mentioned some specific thing like "the university of California" in question..

 

Answer 3

This might be the better explanation

In the see that there is no particular information about the security guard post, so a security guard.

But since the man is Municipal Commissioner, we are certain that in which university he was working, so we know the particular university ---> so the university.

source:http://gateforum.org/224/the-man-who-is-now-municipal-commissioner-worked-as

Answer 4

First, we can remove options A and D because they use "the security guard". This would only be right if he was the only guard or a very special one, which isn't true here.

Now, let's look at the remaining options:

B. "a security guard at the university"
C. "a security guard at university"

Both of these have a small problem. They say "the university" or just "university", but we don't know which university they're talking about. It could be any university in his city or even in another city.

The best answer would have been "a security guard at a university". But since we don't have this option, we need to choose between B and C.

Option C, "a security guard at university", is not very common in normal English. It's sometimes used in British English to mean "while attending university" rather than working there. So people might think he was a student who also worked as a guard, which is not given so we can't be certain about it.

Option B, "a security guard at the university", is better. It shows he was one of many guards at a specific university. Even though we don't know which university but this option is clearer and less confusing than C.

So, out of these choices, B is the best answer we can pick.

**from the information given by Claude AI as it is or edited.