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I am having trouble choosing the answer for this question :

Q The magistrate ______ remanded her in judicial custody till October 1. Police sources said Ms. Saraswathi would be_______in the Salem Women's Prison.

a) has, lodging.
b) later, lodged.
c) had, stayed.
d) All of these.
e) None of these.

The answer is option B. I am confused between lodging and lodged. When should we use would+be+v+ing and would+be+V3? I am not able to eliminate any option, but I think maybe 'stayed' is wrong here.

ColleenV
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manish thakur
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1 Answers1

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This is a challenging question because it relies heavily on idiom rather than grammar. When talking about situations like the results of government or police action, it's common to use the passive voice or past participle to suggest either that the action includes some element of coercion, and/or that no particular individual is responsible.

Examples of this in a judicial context:

Criminal suspects are often detained in a police holding cell up to 96 hours depending on the severity of the crime.

The child shall be remanded to the custody of her maternal grandfather for the duration of these proceedings.

The evidence was placed in a police lockup, where any authorized officer might have had access to it.

Idiomatically, the present continuous "lodging" is more frequently used for things like vacation getaways. In this context, using it would suggest a nice, short-term stay, almost as if Ms. Saraswathi would be enjoying her stay at the prison. Meanwhile the past participle "lodged" suggests instead she is stuck there, for some indefinite length of time.

So the correct answer is "B", if only by process of elimination:

The magistrate later remanded her in judicial custody till October 1. Police sources said Ms. Saraswathi would be lodged in the Salem Women's Prison.

To put it another way: For excursions, you get to choose where to lodge. If someone else lodges you somewhere, it's not likely to be as pleasant.

Side note: The use of the verb "lodge" here is distinctly BrE. AmE would not use "lodged" but instead "incarcerated" or "held" (if for a criminal offense), or "housed" (if for observation or protection).

Andrew
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  • Thank you Andrew.. I got it passive tense will be used here. – manish thakur Sep 26 '18 at 16:06
  • @manishthakur Yes, or the past participle as a kind of passive adjective. But now that you know the idiom, you'll see it all the time in these kind of newspaper articles, e.g. "The government began a program where immigrants would be allowed* to ..."* – Andrew Sep 26 '18 at 16:10
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    So, just to be extra clear, we could write "The magistrate has remanded her...", but because "lodging" doesn't fit in the second sentence, we have to throw that choice out the window. We know choice "C" isn't correct, because "...she would be stayed in..." isn't correct, but what about the first part "The magistrate had remanded her..."? – ColleenV Sep 26 '18 at 16:29
  • @ColleenV as I said, process of elimination. Since neither "lodging" nor "stayed" fits, it's pretty much a moot point. Either B is correct, or none of them are correct. I think they put "had" as an answer as a kind of "red herring" to catch students who read the question too quickly. – Andrew Sep 26 '18 at 16:34
  • @Andrew I meant if you ignore the fact that it is an exam, and the two words have to go together, would there be anything wrong with using "had"? I think there would although I'm not sure it would be ungrammatical. the "till October" makes me not want to use "had". – ColleenV Sep 26 '18 at 16:39
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    @ColleenV I wouldn't use "had" there, although it's not entirely incorrect as the reporter might be referring to a previously mentioned event, or else implying some temporal relationship to some other unmentioned event. But this is more the common ELL topic of when/how to use the perfect tenses, exhaustively covered in StoneyB's canonical post – Andrew Sep 26 '18 at 16:53