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Post by Somak Meitei on Oct 4, 2014 18:29:01 GMT 5.5
I came across some questions of English grammar, which are grammatically issues for me.They are:
1)As --- cuts it as well as he does, I always have this hair cut.
a) anyone b) everyone c) no one else
( To me, in case of anyone, as 'anyone' can do as 'he', 'I' does not depend on 'he' for the hair cut so at any time 'I' can have the hair cut, and in case of 'no one else' 'I' seems to be boastful to others for the hair cut that ' only the 'he' can cut, and it seems that 'he' is a man of 'I'. But I don't know which the best one is.)
2) A friend of --- did it.
a) her b) hers c) she
(I came across both: her and hers , here in this case also , a question for me: 'which sounds good?')
Thanks
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Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Oct 5, 2014 1:59:01 GMT 5.5
1. Each of the three options [(a) anyone, (b) everyone, and (c) no one else] can occur grammatically in the slot represented by the blank. The sentence will have a different meaning when it has "no one else" than when it has either "anyone" or "everyone", which mean almost the same but for the slight difference in significance. If every option can occupy the blank slot grammatically, and if any of them means no nonsense, I am not sure why an examiner would consider two options of the three as incorrect "grammatically." If anyone/everyone/everybody can style your hair as fashionably as X, your most frequent hairstylist, does, then you never worry about your favorite hairstyle (in fact one you always wear) even if X dies or you part ways with them. No matter what happens, you are guaranteed that you can always have your favorite haircut because anybody can do your hair that way. If no other persons can do your hair the way X does, then you always have the kind of haircut/hairstyle you want because X is always there. If X is not a good hairstylist, I don't know why you won't leave them and go to a good one, if nothing (whatever it may be) is stopping you from doing so. 2. Let's forget about (a) her, (b) hers, and (c) she. What would you say if you had to talk about your friend here? (a) A friend of me did it.
(b) A friend of my did it.
(c) A friend of I did it.
(d) A friend of mine did it. It is "mine," nothing else--(d) A friend of mine did it. The only one context I know where the objective forms--me, us, him, them, her, etc.--can go with this "of" construction is something like this: 3 (a)A photo (or video/audio clip) of him... which is dirrefent from 3 (b)A photo (or video/audio clip) of his... In 3(a), the person is in the photo while 3(b) means the picture is owned by the person. Whether he is in the photo or not is not the question. The possessive determiners--my, our, your, her, and their-- are used only attributively, that is, they precede the noun they possessively modify. These determiners are not used in the "of" construction above. The possessive pronouns--mine, his, hers, ours, yours, and theirs--are used in "of" constructions, that is, without a noun immediately after them. Yes, in older poetry, they were sometimes (in fact very judiciously) used like determiners, for sound and rhythm effects. And then return and sleep within mine inn
--William Shakespeare: Comedy of Errors, 1:2 More frequently than this, they even followed the nouns they were made to modify. Mi perdonato, gentle master mine,
I am in all affected as yourself
--William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew, 1:1 |
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Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Oct 5, 2014 2:18:35 GMT 5.5
Quite incidentally, my comment on a friend's Facebook post yesterday has an interesting case of "his." If the underlined (example) sentence in the quoted text below alone don't make a clear sense, then read it with a couple of sentences preceding it. The word "his" in this sentence is different (in terms of grammatical category) from "his" in the following sentence even if they take the same orthographic and phonological form. Mary is his mother. In the former instance, "his" is a pronoun, replacing the noun. It means "his bits" (XYZ's bits). In the second example, "his" is a possessive determiner, not a pronoun, and the removal of "mother" would leave its meaning incomplete, because in this kind of use, no possessive determiner can stand alone without a noun they modify. |
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