There's not an onion？

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eagleflych

#488595 Thu, 13 Mar 08 08:35 PM

Hi everybody:

I've seen the negative sentence below in a book and I've not understood it's meaning. Please help me.

"There's not an onion in the house." Stick out tongue

Does it mean "The number of onions in the house is zero" or "The number of onions in the house is not one and may be two, three, etc"?

Thanks a lot.

eagleflych

Joined on Thu, Mar 13 2008

New User (05)

Negatives, Numbers

Grammar Geek

#488600 Thu, 13 Mar 08 09:43 PM

For standard, straight-forward declarations, I would say "There are no onions," not "There's not an onion."

However, for empahsis, you can say "There's not a [whatever] in the [whatever]."

There's not a soul in the room. (No one is there.)

There's not a parking spot to be found. (There are no parking places anywhere.)

Who ate all the candy? There's not a single piece in this bag! (There are none.)

Does that make sense?

Grammar Geek

Joined on Tue, Jan 10 2006

Pennsylvania, USA

Forum Guru (14,495)

Barbara, who answers in American English.

Avangi

#488609 Thu, 13 Mar 08 10:08 PM

Yes, it means the number of onions is zero.

"There wasn't a dry eye in the house" is almost idiomatic - as GG says, for emphasis.

Congratulations on your first post, Eagleflych, and WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!

Avangi

Joined on Mon, Nov 19 2007

Advanced Member (2,192)

". . . le plaisir delicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation inutile." - Henri de Regnier

Numbers

CalifJim

#488658 Fri, 14 Mar 08 01:22 AM

Avangi
"There wasn't a dry eye in the house"

Do you think there's a connection between this one and the 'onion' one?

Could the 'onion' sentence have meant The play is so bad it fails to cause anyone in the audience to cry ?

Big Smile

CalifJim

Joined on Mon, Aug 2 2004

California

Forum Guru (15,629)

"There are no facts, only interpretations" - Nietzsche

Avangi

#488672 Fri, 14 Mar 08 02:30 AM

Sorry, CJ, I had made a connection in my original post, but the system was going nuts and kept swallowing the post. I lost my cool. The context connection would have been humorous (I had hoped) but the grammatical point was simply that, yes, these are common.

Woops! I missed the laughing face. Not my day.

Avangi

CalifJim

#488681 Fri, 14 Mar 08 02:48 AM

How strange! And what a coincidence! I was having trouble at the same time with this thread. My post got posted twice and then swallowed my deletion request. Weird stuff going on! Smile

CalifJim