SSC CPO 05 June 2016 Morning Shift

For the following questions answer them individually

Four alternatives are given for the Idiom/Phrase printed in bold. Choose the alternative which best expresses the meaning of Idiom/Phrase.

For the following questions answer them individually

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.