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Mates
May 30, 2008 14:49:27 GMT
Post by goofy on May 30, 2008 14:49:27 GMT
AIUI "mass noun" is another term for "non-count noun".
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:07:09 GMT
Post by SusanB on May 30, 2008 15:07:09 GMT
Susan, Would you accept "one of my jewellery"? How much is it worth? (My first smiley!) Susan.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:07:37 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 15:07:37 GMT
Ah. So jewellery is a mass noun, crowd is a count noun?
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:13:43 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 15:13:43 GMT
I can't leave this alone! If I say
- One of my dolls houses
That surely can't be understood to mean that one of my dolls has several houses (i.e. would be written one of my dolls' houses)? And one of my dolls' house just sounds silly, although presumably people who accept one of my children's jewellery would accept one of my dolls' house as meaning the house for one of my dolls?
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:19:10 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 15:19:10 GMT
No, the more I think about it, we have to see it as "one of my children's jewellery" (and therefore ungrammatical) and no amount of wishful thinking will make it "one of my children's jewellery".
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:19:34 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 15:19:34 GMT
Maybe ...
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:20:55 GMT
Post by Alan Palmer on May 30, 2008 15:20:55 GMT
Paul, I can see why you've reached Senior Member status so quickly!
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:21:39 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 15:21:39 GMT
True!
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:22:31 GMT
Post by SusanB on May 30, 2008 15:22:31 GMT
I can't leave this alone! If I say - One of my dolls houses That surely can't be understood to mean that one of my dolls has several houses (i.e. would be written one of my dolls' houses)? And one of my dolls' house just sounds silly, although presumably people who accept one of my children's jewellery would accept one of my dolls' house as meaning the house for one of my dolls? No, no, no! At least, this one of the people who would accept one of my children's jewellery, would not accept one of my dolls' house. I think I'm not reading jewellery as singular.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:35:01 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 30, 2008 15:35:01 GMT
Would you accept one of my children's house, Susan?
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:41:42 GMT
Post by SusanB on May 30, 2008 15:41:42 GMT
No, I wouldn't. But I couldn't handle 'one of my children's piece of jewellery' either. That's probably where my problem is - I can't see 'jewellery' as singular in the sentence.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:44:13 GMT
Post by Dave M on May 30, 2008 15:44:13 GMT
I think you've blocked your brain up a bit with worrying at it, Paul.
We can't have one of my dolls house, because the "one of" can't apply to "house" (it's singular) and though it can apply to "dolls", there's then no grammatical connection to "house".
The one of my children's jewellery, you'll recall, was introduced into the argument specifically to remove the ambiguity, and provide us with a sentence in which the "one of" MUST be applying to the "my children".
The point, though, is that people DO SAY this kind of phrase, and it's perfectly understood in context: the speaker (for people usually don't write the pattern) and listener are both tuned to the idea that they're talking about their children, and what one of them does or has.
If I say one of my cars' tax discs is running out that's fine, as is one of the the tax discs of my cars is running out. We seem to be OK with The tax disc of one of my cars is running out, so why can't I introduce the apostrophed version? The answer, surely, is one of style and ambiguity, not one of grammar per se.
How about I've just found the woman I met on the ferry in Portsmouth's handbag in my suitcase ? Grammatically, it's OK - but stylistically it's awful.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:53:29 GMT
Post by SusanB on May 30, 2008 15:53:29 GMT
How about I've just found the woman I met on the ferry in Portsmouth's handbag in my suitcase ? Grammatically, it's OK - but stylistically it's awful. I agree that this is okay but awkward. But on first reading I did find there to be a woman inside a handbag, and that the handbag belonged to Portsmouth. I suppose that was provoked by the ugliness of the sentence! But I often seem to misinterpret things on first reading. How common/careless is this? I know everyone does it sometimes. Do they do it as frequently as I do?
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Mates
May 30, 2008 15:56:52 GMT
Post by Dave M on May 30, 2008 15:56:52 GMT
I think it's the "garden path" effect, Susan: we begin to interpret the sentence along the lines suggested by the first words, and then find ourselves having to change the interpretation. A well-known example is time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana, but I seem to recall that Paul came up with some super examples quite a while back.
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Mates
May 30, 2008 16:17:39 GMT
Post by Pete on May 30, 2008 16:17:39 GMT
No, goofy. I think some are looking for confusion where none exists. Alan, I think what we are doing is debating whether there is the potential for confusion and whether grammatical rules or conventions can prevent those ambiguities. But you are right that, certainly outside the bounds of this forum, many of the examples would be considered completely unambiguous. But that doesn't mean that the listener will hear what the speaker meant (or reader and writer, as appropriate).
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