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Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 17:50:53 +1100
From: cguttman <4everclever4@web.de>
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Subject: Re: grammar rule: "these" refers to last mentioned type....
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Thank you! This was helpful - well explained.
Chris
Chris Croughton wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:37:44 +1100, cguttman
> <4everclever4@web.de> wrote:
>
>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>Yes, you can highlight any type of activity by an additional word.
>>For example, you could say:
>>
>>"All these activities", and mean a,b, and c activities.
>>"These last activities", and mean c activities (which is still ambiguous).
>>etc...
>>
>>But I was wondering if there is an English Grammar rule that says that
>>"These activities" always refer to the activities last mentioned.
>
>
> Generally, it's the last or current sentence, so
>
> I like plain cakes and fruit cakes. And chocolate cakes, these are
> the ones I bake.
>
> and it would mean that the chocolate cakes are the ones referred to by
> 'these'.
>
> However, in speech it isn't always clear where sentence boundaries are
> so this could be ambiguous. If there is any doubt, it's best to qualify
> it with "all these" or "these last" as appropriate.
>
> Note that a similar thing happens with time, as in "this Wednesday". Is
> that the one just gone or the one to come? Often that is disambiguated
> by the tense ("I am going to ... this Wednesday" is obviously in the
> future), but 'next' is not so well defined, some people using it as "the
> next to arrive" and others meaning the ones after that (today is
> Thursday, if I say something about "next Friday", do I mean tomorrow
> or the one after?). Some people even use both, depending on how far
> away it is, so "next Friday" would mean the one just over a week from
> now but "next Monday" would mean the next occuring one in 4 days time.
>
> When in doubt about what is said, ask; when in doubt as to whether what
> you say is ambiguous, disambiguate it. Assumptions of either can be
> dangerous...
>
> Chris C
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