re: Choose The Correct Answer? page 2

Yoong Liat
There were spectators at the match.

There were no spectators at the match.

You cannot say

There were not spectators at the match.

Why can't I say "There were not spectators at the match."?

What about "There isn't any orange juice in the fridge."?, it's true and the same.

Why can't I say "There were not spectators at the match."?

What about "There isn't any orange juice in the fridge."?, it's true and the same.
It is correct to say "There isn't any orange juice in the fridge" but not "There were not spectators at the match." They are not the same although they appear to be so.

Hi guys,

Why can't I say "There were not spectators at the match."?

It's not grammatically wrong to say this. To some extent, it's just not idiomatic. Howewever, here are a few other comments.

There were not any spectators at the match. This would certainly be by far the more common thing to say. Spectators are normal and expected at matches. There just didn't happen to be any at this match.

There were not spectators at the match. These words sound a little less odd if you imagine them spoken as 'There weren't spectators at the match'. They speak of spectators in a more general way. By doing this, they suggest to me possibilities like this -

1.) Perhaps they are intended to emphasize 'no spectators of any kind, none whatsoever'. eg If you ask me 3 times about the spectators at the match, and I keep telling you that there weren't any, I might finally respond with these more general words to really stress my meaning to you.

2.) There are never spectators at this particular match (eg a closed chess-championship), and you don't seem to know this well-known fact. I might say, in a somewhat similar way, there weren't Martians at the match.

Best wishes, Clive

Thanks very much guys

Yoong LiatThere were not any spectators at the match.

I have not seen this sentence in my life and wonder whether it is correct English.

Because you saw it in the form:
There weren't any spectators at the match.
This is correct too, but is wasn't one of the test choices (any was missing).

Generally speaking, 'no' negates an object, a thing, while 'not' negates a property, a characteristic. If you consider 'spectators' as a property (e.g. '...not spectators, but players'), 'not' is a proper choice. Otherwise, 'no' should be used. This is why we can safely say that 'no' can be interpreted as 'not any', because 'any' is a property.

Regards,

Slava

By this time tomorrow we will have the meeting.
There isn't any orange juice in the fridge.

PenicillinHello
Please which one is correct?
1- By this time tomorrow we ..... the meeting.
A- will have
B- will have had
C- are having
D- will had had
2. ..... orange juice in the fridge.
A- There isn't no
B- There is an
C- There isn't any
D- There aren't no
Thanks