SSC CPO 05 June 2016 Morning Shift

In the following passage some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer to each question out of the four alternatives and fill in the blanks.
The Dalmatian of the sole surviving (semi-) speaker, Tuone Udaina, was surveyed in the late 1870s and again towards the end of his life in the late 1890s. These fairly extensive records curiously suggest that a systematic ______1______ change took place in those two decades such that by the 1980s the distinction between present and imperfect indicative had largely been neutralized (a development unique among Romance languages) in favour of the imperfect tense forms. I argue that the data are authentic and that the change, whether in occurred just in Udaina’s head or was already underway in the last years of Dalmatian as a spoken language, is purely ‘internal’ and not ________2_______ by contact with other languages. I explore its internal mechanisms and show that what is involved is a kind of analogical form-meaning levelling whose signatium is an ‘empty’ element of ________3_______ structure. Reinforcement of this essentially ‘nonsensical’ _________4_________ of paradigmatic structure constitutes further evidence for my general view that intrapadigmatic coherence may be no less important than extra morphological transparency. It also suggests that such a development can as easily _______5________ in a dying language as anywhere else.

In the following questions, you have two passages with 5 questions in each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer top each question out of the four alternatives.
A dolphin is an aquatic mammal. Dolphins are extremely intelligent and sociable animals and have their own way to communicate with each other using special sounds.
Although they are often mistaken for fis, dolphins are actually mammals. They are members of the Cataca (pronounced se-ayshia) family, which also contains whales and porpoises.
One way of telling the difference between a cetacean and a fish is by looking at their tails. You can tell a cetacean because their tail fins (called flukes) are horizontal and move up and down. Fish have vertical tails which move from side to side.
A dolphin’s body is designed to help them move quickly and easily through water. On its back is a curved dorsal fin and on each side of the dolphin is a pectoral fin. The bump on a dolphins head is known as the melon. They trap their prey by using their teeth.
Dolphins use a type of sonar to detect where objects are around them. This is called echolocation. Echolocation works when a dolphin bounces a high pitched sound off an object and then listens for the echo to come back. It is a very useful way for dolphins to find food and navigate.
Dolphins communicate with each other through clicks, squeaks and whistles. They use these special sounds to greet each other and to indicate if they are in distress.
Dolphins live in the sea, but they can’t breathe under water. They breathe through a blowhole and have to come up for air every 15 minutes.