Korean Job Discussion Forums

kloofy · Joined: 17 Sep 2009

Grammar question - Why, please give details?

Choose the similar usage of �of' from the following:

"Two Heads Are Better Than One" doesn't mean that two-headed monsters are better than the rest // of // us.

(... the rest "OF" us)

① the last scene of the movie.

② the virtue of charity.

③ It is kind of you to remember it.

④ He died of cancer.

⑤ the king of kings.

Thiuda · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 6:23 am Post subject: Re: Grammar question

Universalis · Joined: 17 Nov 2003 Location: Seoul

Sentences 1, 2, and 5 are examples of what is called a periphrastic genettive, which means a possessive form that uses extra words rather than an infelctional suffix. You could rewrite those phrases as follows:

the movie's last scene

charity's virtue

kings' king

As for sentence 3, I'm not sure what it is exactly... it's some sort of prepositional phrase modifiying the adjective "kind."

In sentence 4, of indicates the means of dying.

Your original sentence is different from all of these... "rest" is serving as a pronoun, which is then modified by the prep. phrase "of us" (for example: "My friend bought movie tickets for both of us."). The sentence would be perfectly gramatical with "... monsters are better than the rest."

In other words, there are no similarities between your sample sentence and the other uses of "of." Welcome to the world of English prepositions.

Brian

grant gerstners · Joined: 13 Jan 2010 Location: USA

kloofy · Joined: 17 Sep 2009

thanks for the feedback... this is an actual TOEFL test question, will put up the answer after the test is done. that's if the instructor can explain it grammatically.
I was thinking 3, but many agreed with 5... Anyhow, will keep you posted.

edwardcatflap · Joined: 22 Mar 2009

Ridiculous. You don't even need to know stuff like that to teach English at the highest level, never mind to pass a foreign language test

tek75 · Joined: 15 Jun 2006

Geez, this is like a brainteaser. (Is this really relevant to learning English?)

Anyhow, my pick is #1. It's based on the whole "subset" idea others have mentioned. I don't think "the king of kings" is really a subset as much as an expression that express some high degree or epitome of some quality (e.g. "beauty among beauties"=someone who's REALLY beautiful).

If #5 was something like "one of the kings," then that would work, too, but I think "the king of kings" is being used to express just how powerful that one king is, as opposed to expressing that he's a subset of the group. In #1, the "last scene" is one of the scenes that make up the movie, so that DOES constitute a subset, as in "the rest of us."

I could be wrong, but that's my theory.