Each of the following sentences has a word or phrase underlined. Read the sentences carefully and find which part of speech the underlined word is. Indicate your response on the Answer Sheet accordingly.
It is eleven O'clock now and all of **us** should retire to bed.
- APersonal pronoun
- BRelative pronoun
- CImpersonal pronoun
- DVerb
Explanation
In the original UPSC paper the underlined word is 'It' in 'It is eleven O'clock now' — the dummy/expletive 'it' used for time, which has no antecedent and is called the impersonal pronoun. A personal pronoun (I, we, us, they) always has a definite personal referent, and a relative pronoun (who, which, that) introduces a relative clause; neither applies to this 'It'. It is obviously not a verb. Hence (C) Impersonal pronoun is correct. Note: the bold markup in this file sits on 'us', but the paper underlines 'It' — the markup appears misplaced and the key follows the paper.