I'll leave my comments till later as I'm in a bit of a hurry, but here are two questions from a test paper.

1. Come to supper with us, Mister Smith.
Great. I _______bring a bottle of wine.

A. will B. can C. may D. must

2. There used to be a shop here, _______________.

A. usedn't it B. used there C. usedn't there D. didn't it

My comments tomorrow. Feel free to pre-empt me.

Oh yes, meant to say - no other context is given and the instruction isto choose the best answer.

Now we know where Pearson gets all its great standardized test questions

And now, for me, it's the next morning, so here are my thoughts.

Clearly, in the first question, all four choices form gramatically correct sentences. More importantly they are all logically correct responses with slightly different meanings.

I suspect the required answer is A. but would not blink for a moment if anyone answered in real life with B, C or D. The choice between A and D is particularly tricky being simply a matter of register.

In question 2 the answer is clearly C but for heaven's sake - has anybody used the word usedn't in the last hundred years? It's old-fashioned verging on obsolete. I put the questions to a slightly younger colleague who didn't even know that it was a word. I don't know about elsewhere but where i come from by far the most common tag question here would be

"There used to be a shop here, didn't there?"

My reading of old literature makes me familiar with such phrasing as "usedn't" but I suspect my colleague's reaction would be far more typical.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

For #1, I had no hesitation that it would be A., but all the others could work, you are correct.

For #2, I said "None of the above;" I, for one, have never even heard of usedn't.

You see for #1 I would be more likely to say "must".

For #2 I'm not at all surprised that you haven't heard it. It is the logical tag question form for "used to" but it's pretty well obsolete in modern English - though I think "usen't" is heard in some dialects.

I definitely can see "must," as it tells the host that you won't accept no for an answer.

As for "usen't," there are only 41,000 hits for it in Google, so it isn't real well-known. It seems to be chiefly British.