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Latest post Fri, Jul 17 2009 3:24 PM by Alex+. 6 replies.
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Alex+  +  822787 Thu, 16 Jul 09 08:21 PM
The situation: one man of the group has left his umbrella, but we don’t know who exactly.
Which sentence is correct in this situation?

1. Someone of them has left his umbrella.

2. Some of them has left his umbrella.
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Vorpar  +  822856 Thu, 16 Jul 09 09:28 PM
Neither:

One of them has left his umbrella.

or

Someone has left his umbrella.

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Santa Barbara, CA
Regular Member 940
Philip  +  823078 Fri, 17 Jul 09 01:05 AM
OR:

Someone in the group (from the group, from among them) has left his umbrella.

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Clive  +  823081 Fri, 17 Jul 09 01:09 AM
Hi,

The situation: one man of the group has left his umbrella, but we don’t know who exactly.
Which sentence is correct in this situation?

1. Someone of them has left his umbrella.

2. Some of them has left his umbrella.

 

As noted above, we'd typically say instead 'Someone has left his umbrella'.

 

#1 is wrong. However, #2 is correct but literary in tone, formal, stylish and rather old-fashioned.

 

The following excerpt was wriiten in 1938. It means that one of them occupied the land, but it doesn't tell us which one.

. . . he died in 1706. His three sons, George, William, and John, inherited and some one of them occupied the land.

 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~sccalhou/history/earlysettlers.htm

Published in The Proceedings of The South Carolina Historical Association, 1938

 

Note that you can also use the same construction for numbers greater than one, as in the following extract. 

The latest careful-what-you-wish-for park is Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota. They received 47 elk from our Refuge in 1985 and are now wondering how to get rid of some 300 of them.

http://www.planetjh.com/news/A_105232.aspx

Published in the Jackson Hole Weekly, in 2009

 

Finally, although this construction is correct, it's not one that I'd normally teach to my English students.

 

Best wishes, Clive

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Alex+  +  823931 Fri, 17 Jul 09 01:46 PM
Thank you for your answers.

Can you answer another two questions?

1. Does the expression “some of them” or “some of those people” always mean “numbers greater than one”? So the correct sentence is “Some of them have left their umbrellas.”?

2. Which form (with “one” or with “body”) is used oftener?

Someone / somebody
Anyone / anybody
Everyone / everybody
Mister Micawber  +  823952 Fri, 17 Jul 09 02:02 PM
My turn.


1. Does the expression “some of them” or “some of those people” always mean “numbers greater than one”?-- Yes.


So the correct sentence is “Some of them have left their umbrellas.”?-- Or 'umbella'.  Yes, if there is more than one abandoned umbrella.

2. Which form (with “one” or with “body”) is used oftener?-- I'd say that '-body' appears more in speech and '-one' appears more in writing.

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Alex+  +  824069 Fri, 17 Jul 09 03:24 PM
Thank you very much.

At last I understood how “some of” works.
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