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2015 · Q49

Hardly I had fallen asleep, when the bell rang.

EnglishSentence Improvement
  1. AI was fallen
  2. Bhad I fallen
  3. CI fell asleep
  4. DNo improvement

Explanation

When a sentence begins with a negative adverb like 'hardly', inversion is required: the auxiliary verb comes immediately before the subject. Thus 'Hardly I had fallen asleep' must become 'Hardly had I fallen asleep'. This inversion also adds the emphasis that fronting 'hardly' is meant to convey. Hence option (B) is correct.