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Q: "Would you like ______ cup of blood?" Count Duclia said to Lord Voldmart.

options given:

a. drinking
b. having
c. another
d. tasting

My Approach:

Drinking, another both can be true according to me.

Is there any other way through which I can analyze the problem to choose appropriate answer or is the Answer correct?

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    In English, those names are spelled Count Dracula and Lord Voldemort.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Aug 26, 2015 at 19:48

1 Answer 1

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In this quotation, the only possible answer is C - "another".

The reason for this is that all of the other options require an article before "cup".

A - Would you like drinking a cup of blood?

B - Would you like having a cup of blood?

D - Would you like tasting a cup of blood?

All of the other options require the article, so the only correct option is "another".

C - Would you like another cup of blood?

As a note, because it came up in the comments, adding "a" to options A, B, and D do not make them mean the same thing as sentence C. They become grammatical by adding "a" but the meaning is quite different.

Sentence C is offering the listener a second cup of blood - "another" implies that they've already consumed at least one cup of blood.

The other three sentences are asking a theoretical question along the lines of

Do you think you would like to [enjoy the action of] drink/have/taste a cup of blood?

This phrasing assumes that the speaker believes the listener has never drunk/had/tasted blood in the past.

Why "a" instead of "the":

"The" is certainly possible but I'd argue that it's less common. Generally, if someone offers you a glass of wine (or blood), they don't offer you "the" (only) glass of wine, they offer you "a" (one of many) glass of wine.

Without some context, it's difficult to know whether there is only a single cup/glass or if there are several and you're being offered a single one.

Let's look at the sentences with "the" and what they mean:

Would you like drinking the cup of blood?

This is certainly possible but, as I mentioned above, it implies that there is only one cup. This also has a speculative quality to it, as if you're asking not, "do you want to drink it" but, "how would you feel about drinking it"?

Personally, as a native speaker, should this be the case, I would prefer the construction:

Would you like to drink the cup of blood?

The same issues occur with the other two examples.

My preferred "the" phrasings of the other two would be:

Would you like to have the cup of blood?

This implies more of a sense of ownership of the cup rather than consuming the blood it contains.

Would you like to taste the cup of blood?

This sounds a bit odd because it sounds more like you're asking if they would like to taste the cup, which happens to be full of blood... which is silly, since you can't eat or drink a (presumably) inedible vessel. So, my truly preferred version of this would be:

Would you like to taste the blood in this cup?

Regardless, the only answer above that works is still "another".

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    @JalajChawla "The" is certainly possible but I'd argue that it's less common. Generally, if someone offers you a glass of wine, they don't offer you "the" (only) glass of wine, they offer you "a" (one of many) glass of wine. If there is only a single glass, and they're offering you a taste of it, they would be more likely (in my opinion) to say "Would you like to taste some of this wine"?
    – Catija ♦
    Aug 26, 2015 at 16:08
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    Would you like drinking a cup of blood and its sister sentences sound completely wrong to me. Like, when associated with a verb, is almost always formed with the infinitive to drink. The only exception I can think of is the past tense, Did you like running the marathon? in which case, running is a gerund (a noun), not a verb anyway.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Aug 26, 2015 at 19:47
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    Suggesting that merely supplying an article prior to cup is sufficient in the other three instances is such a bad recommendation that I must downvote. Would you like drinking/having/tasting is an awful construction. You do suggest the correct construction (Would you like to drink/have/taste) later on, but mark it merely as your preference – this is not a matter of preference. As @PressTilty indicates, in the past tense (Did you like drinking/having/tasting), the -ing form is acceptable, but not with would as you have it. That construction is wrong.
    – KRyan
    Aug 26, 2015 at 21:02
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    @KRyan I think you may be inferring something into the sentence that isn't there... If I was asking someone "What do you think, would you like drinking a cup of blood?".. there's nothing wrong with that sentence and I, as a native speaker, would use it. That question is asking: do you think you would like the action of "drinking a cup of blood"... And that's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask someone.
    – Catija ♦
    Aug 26, 2015 at 22:09
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    @PressTilty Ah, I see. Yes, if that is the intent, then this answer is remarkably unclear, and I find it even more deserving of a downvote. In context, that meaning is very unlikely (both characters drink blood), and if nothing else, the way this affects the meaning needs to be in the answer if that unlikely construction is to be considered at all.
    – KRyan
    Aug 26, 2015 at 22:25

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