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Mates
May 30, 2008 8:30:01 GMT
Post by Dave on May 30, 2008 8:30:01 GMT
43 typed lines, eh, Dave M?
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Mates
May 30, 2008 8:37:41 GMT
Post by Dave on May 30, 2008 8:37:41 GMT
OK, I see what some of you are saying: one of my children as a phrase is possessive by adding the apostrophe s. It's more clear (to me) if we say all of one of my children's jewelry was stolen.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 8:43:35 GMT
Post by Dave M on May 30, 2008 8:43:35 GMT
> one of my children as a phrase is possessive by adding the apostrophe s. <
Yes - that's why I say it's still "grammatical". It's a confusing and ugly style, though.
> all of one of my children's jewelry was stolen. <
Mmmm ... is it really clearer? If we were distracted before into thinking that what was stolen was one of the jewellery of my children, aren't we now just having to decide whether it was the WHOLE of one of the jewellery of my children, or indeed the jewellery of the one entire child? (My brain hurts ...)
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Mates
May 30, 2008 9:01:11 GMT
Post by Pete on May 30, 2008 9:01:11 GMT
I think one of my children's jewellery is entirely grammatical (just as much as the only winner of the competition's jewellery, for example - even though the competition doesn't have any jewellery). The problem is not one of grammar, but of style and understanding. We can make long sentences and, although, as my aunt used to say when she was in India, during her third marriage - to the bread salesman, rather than the supposed "prince" who conned her out of her inheritance from the first marriage, as so famously reported in The Times under the now perhaps libellous headline "Suckers - born every minute" - "size does matter", it's not the length that counts: it's the style. Grammar is a different thing. Back to my earlier point (possibly on another thread) that recasting and using shorter sentences is often an aid to clarity. ;D
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Mates
May 30, 2008 13:09:14 GMT
Post by goofy on May 30, 2008 13:09:14 GMT
Noncount nouns do not occur in singular or plural. One of with a noncount noun is completely ungrammatical for me, whether it's *one of my jewellery or *one of my children's jewellery. This is different from the only winner of the competition's jewellery because in the only winner of the competition's jewellery, the noun jewellery is not modified by a number. But clearly others here have different grammaticality judgments. Perhaps this is a dialect difference.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 13:43:53 GMT
Post by Alan Palmer on May 30, 2008 13:43:53 GMT
No, goofy. I think some are looking for confusion where none exists.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 13:57:41 GMT
Post by Geoff on May 30, 2008 13:57:41 GMT
No, goofy. I think some are looking for confusion where none exists. I thought much the same, Alan.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:14:19 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 14:14:19 GMT
I don't think I'm claiming there's any confusion, but I am claiming there's ungrammaticality.
No, it's a parsing difference, which is why I think it's interesting. Of course I accept Pete's point that we could and should recast it, but that leads us nowhere. Surely one of the things we enjoy here is hacking a phrase to bits and wondering why it is how it is?
The parsing problem is this. One of my children's jewellery can allegedly be parsed as:
1. Jewellery of one of my children 2. One of the jewellery of my children 3. One of my children is jewellery
But 2 and 3 fail commonly accepted rules (2 fails "one of takes a plural noun" and 3 fails because jewellery is not an adjective), which leads 1 as the only valid interpretation, which is no doubt what we'd all understand it to mean. But is it grammatical? I maintain there is a rule that says not only that one of takes a plural noun, but that the plural noun has to be the substantive noun in the phrase. As children's is a possessive noun acting adjectivally, it is not the substantive noun, and does not satisfy one of's requirement for plurality.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:22:55 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 14:22:55 GMT
It follows from that, that a phrase like:
- one of my children's houses
(which would probably be accepted by everyone) really means that I have several children's houses (as a magician might entertain at several children's parties) and this is one of them. It cannot refer to one of the houses owned by my children -- except that it probably does, and no-one worries about it!
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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:23:33 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 14:23:33 GMT
This "substantive noun" thing is quite common: cycle paths, garden gates, leather sofas. Those are types of path, of gate, and of sofa. We are in no doubt which controls other parts in the sentence -- we are never tempted to write the cycle paths is shut, even though cycle is singular we know the controlling noun is the plural paths.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:26:35 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 14:26:35 GMT
And, in passing, why can we say one of the crowd but not one of the jewellery? Is one a mass noun and one a count noun? Which is which?
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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:33:39 GMT
Post by goofy on May 30, 2008 14:33:39 GMT
jewellery is a noncount noun. It cannot be modified by a number, it cannot be pluralized, it cannot occur with determiners like a, every, or each.
Just like we don't have *one of the water, we have one of the glasses of water - we don't have *one of the jewellery, we have one of the pieces of jewellery.
crowd is a count noun. One crowd, two crowds, every crowd.
Note that some nouns can be both count and noncount, but they often have different meanings. In the waters of the ocean, waters is count.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:38:05 GMT
Post by Alan Palmer on May 30, 2008 14:38:05 GMT
Another unusual example is people.
There are lots of people in Africa.
There are lots of peoples in Africa.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:39:06 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 14:39:06 GMT
Thank you, goofy. Where does a mass noun come in?
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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:39:30 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 14:39:30 GMT
And Alan!
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