Search results for 'tag:Definite articles tag:Negatives' matching tags 'Definite articles' and 'Negatives'

Re: few/ a few

Cool Breeze — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:00:12 GMT

Emily_ wrote:
Hi, I found this explanation on the BBC:

When we use few and little without the indefinite article, they usually have a negative meaning, but when we use them with the indefinite article, a little or a few, they have a more positive meaning. Compare the following:

I have few friends in England and I feel quite lonely.

I have a few friends in England, so I don't miss home so much.

I remember also another one from school: "a few" is less than "few". But neither of them wonÂ´t help me with sentence:

"I was surprised when he said he believed that the earth was flat, because I thought few people believed that nowadays." (a few is not correct)

Maybe only when it is supposed that the believing of the flat earth has negative meaning.?.

Thank you

Emily

There is a mistake in your text. It should be: 'A few is more than few'. Few usually means the same as very few or hardly any:

I have (very) few friends in England and I feel quite lonely. (= I have hardly any friends...)

A few usually means the same as some:
I have a few/some friends to go out with, so I don't have to feel lonely.

Cheers
CB

few/ a few

Emily_ — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 08:56:18 GMT

Hi, I found this explanation on the BBC:

When we use few and little without the indefinite article, they usually have a negative meaning, but when we use them with the indefinite article, a little or a few, they have a more positive meaning. Compare the following:

I have few friends in England and I feel quite lonely.
I have a few friends in England, so I don't miss home so much.

I remember also another one from school: "a few" is less than "few". But neither of them wonÂ´t help me with sentence:

"I was surprised when he said he believed that the earth was flat, because I thought few people believed that nowadays." (a few is not correct)

Maybe only when it is supposed that the believing of the flat earth has negative meaning.?.

Thank you

Emily

Re: Classification of the word "The"

Mister Micawber — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:58:08 GMT

The is an article (the definite article, to be precise), a kind of determiner.

Your set of 'negatives' are not of the same nature of classification of parts of speech as are conjunctions, determiners, adjectives, etc. Not is an adverb (albeit negative), did is an auxiliary verb.

Re: any, a

paco2004 — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 02:51:06 GMT

Teo wrote:
Grammatically conceivable, but nevertheless still unacceptable on grounds of extreme unnaturalness.

We do not normally use 'any' with an unmodified countable noun in a simple interrogative of this type (#5, you will observe, is a negative, not interrogative sentence, to which somewhat different restrictions apply).

It is an instance of the kind of idiomatic restriction which only an extensive experience of English can teach you.

My advice to you,in case of doubt, is not to attempt to use 'any' is such contexts. A simple indefinite article will rarely, if ever, be incorrect(Do you have a child? There isn't a hospital here., etc.)
<removed>

Once I was blamed here that I used Google too much, but I still believe a google search will give us a good clue about what form of sentence a majority of English speakers actually use for such a questioning.

Do you have children? 2,040,000
Do you have any children? 185,000
Do you have a child? 86,300
Do you have any child? 295

Do you have pets? 159,000
Do you have any pets? 447,000
Do you have a pet? 125,300
Do you have any pet? 149,000

The results agree with my understanding that "any X" has a qualitative sense (= "any kind of X") when X is a countable noun, whereas "any Xs" can imply a quantitative sense (i.e., "any number of Xs") in addition to the qualitative sense.

paco

Re: any, a

Teo — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:45:56 GMT

Grammatically conceivable, but nevertheless still unacceptable on grounds of extreme unnaturalness.

We do not normally use 'any' with an unmodified countable noun in a simple interrogative of this type (#5, you will observe, is a negative, not interrogative sentence, to which somewhat different restrictions apply).

It is an instance of the kind of idiomatic restriction which only an extensive experience of English can teach you.

My advice to you,in case of doubt, is not to attempt to use 'any' is such contexts. A simple indefinite article will rarely, if ever, be incorrect(Do you have a child? There isn't a hospital here., etc.)

Re: The expression "to constitute the basis for"

Sextus — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 23:41:03 GMT

Now I'm very used to not using the definite article as much as I do in Spanish. Furthermore, I think that English has had some negative influence upon my Spanish in this respect.

I'll give you an example which surprised me:

"Here the moral scepticism rests crucially on the confidence that there is such a viewpoint."

Yes, one would say that the author (a native speaker) wants it to be more specific. In any case, I wouldn't have used the two "the"s. Or perhaps only the second.

Sextus

Re: parts of speech

Mister Micawber — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 14:39:08 GMT

1) My little brother would not turn down the radio volume in the morning.

MY = possessive adjective
LITTLE = DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVE
BROTHER = noun
WOULD = modal auxiliary
NOT = NEGATIVE PARTICLE
TURN = main verb
DOWN = adverb particle
THE = definite article
RADIO = noun (used as an adjective)
VOLUME = noun
IN = preposition
THE = definite article
MORNING = NOUN OBJECT OF PREPOSITION; THE PREP PHRASE IS A TIME ADVERBIAL

1) She came to class very late.

SHE = nominative personal pronoun
CAME = main verb
TO = preposition
CLASS = noun
VERY = adverb of intensity
LATE = adverb of time

Re: What's the logic behind this?

MrPedantic — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 16:25:13 GMT

Thanks, Eagle, Paco, and MisterM for all your painstaking posts! Much to chew on.

1.

It's odd that both your and K's dictionaries give this structure, which I seldom if ever hear. Maybe it's more common elsewhere.

Sorry, all: I should have been clearer. I meant the âChild as he wasâ¦â construction seemed unusual to me. (âChild thoughâ¦â and âChild thatâ¦â donât seem strange.)

2.

'N as S V' structure in which 'as' means 'though' is no longer acceptable in modern English.

Your bean isnât necessarily antique, K. It may be that my experience is limited.

In my first post, I was flummoxed by the sense:

âChild as he was, he could outwit the robber.â

I took âChild asâ¦â to mean not âChild thoughâ¦â but âBeing a childâ¦â. So my reading was in conflict with the intended sense: âChild thoughâ¦â is concessive, but âchild asâ¦â (I thought) was simply complementary.

This interpretation was supported by the quote from Dickens:

'Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery.'

Here, âasâ canât mean âthoughâ: children are not immune to hunger and misery. So it must mean âsince he was a childâ.

However, this example from Pacoâs post:

âChild as he is, he can think clearly and act wiselyâ

(where âasâ must = âthoughâ) shows that my original interpretation was wrong. The sense here is clearly concessive. So I can only assume that either Dickens got his idiom slightly wrong, or âChild asâ¦â had a simple complementary sense in his day.

3.

'Fool that he was, he managed to evade his pursuers.'

Now this caught my eye in MisterMâs post. There does indeed seem to be a difference here between AmE and BrE:

a) AmE - 'Fool that he was, he managed to evade his pursuers.'
= âFool though he wasâ¦â â OK in AmE, as MisterM says.

b) BrE - 'Fool that he was, he managed to evade his pursuers.'
= âBeing the fool that he was, he managed to evade his pursuersâ, which is nonsensical.

So I would have to make the 2nd clause negative, to understand it:

'Fool that he was, he nonetheless managed to evade his pursuers.'

Interestingly, as JTT points out, this does add a slightly disparaging note; and the same form can also be used metaphorically:

âChild that he was, he would not accept my conclusionsâ â i.e. he was behaving childishly.

(MisterM's second example has this non-concessive sense of 'as' too: 'Clumsy idiot that he was, Michael completely ruined the dinner.')

4.

The noun has the role of a characterizing attribute [cf. 'he turned traitor' -- MM]."

That sounds much better than my âellipsisâ suggestion â especially as I can find no examples in earlier literature of a common, fuller version.

Also, it occurs to me that âfrontingâ of the noun is common in e.g. early alliterative poetry in Germanic languages. So we would have to go a long way back to find evidence of ellipses. And I suppose you couldn't 'front', if you included the article...and there's nowhere else to put it...

(That does still leave the question of why we omit the indefinite article with a âcharacterizing attributeâ; but for another day.)

MrP