Korean Job Discussion Forums

[raewon]

Composers wanted to express emotion, movement, and ideas through music.
In order for music to express all this, composers had to develop new techniques.

In that second sentence, is it possible for "all this" to be used instead of
"all these"? Seems to me I've heard this usage many times, but it isn't
grammatically correct, is it?

Thank you for any replies.

[Jingo besus]

Is it because there Isn't a noun after the determiner, so it defaults to the singular form?

Otherwise it could be 'In order for music to express all of these elements...', elements being countable it then would be appropriate to use 'these' instead of 'this'.

[raewon]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, music is uncountable. But "this" would be emotion, movement, and ideas, wouldn't it? I think "all this" sounds right but looks/is wrong.

[Jingo besus]

sorry, i edited because i realised i'd initialy misread the sentence. you were too quick for me

[Chimie]

all this

or

all of these

[raewon]

Ha! Thanks for the edit.

Of course, I agree that "all of these elements" would be correct.

Chimie has said that "all this" or "all of these" could be used. What is the reasoning that makes "all this" grammatically correct? Is it just as
Jingo besus has said (due to the absence of a noun)?

Thanks a lot.

[Jingo besus]

I think the issue is that the subject of the sentence is purely contextual (you know its about emotion, movement, and ideas, but only because of the sentence before it).

You need to know whether the noun is countable or uncountable in order to pick the correct determiner but if you isolate that sentence you have no context to make this decision, so without this information it would be treated as if its uncountable by default, ie the sigular 'this'.

This isn't based on any teaching experience though, just what i've been picking up from trying to relearn my grammar basics...

[Zyzyfer]

I suspect "this" would be referring to the complete thought that is the first sentence. No hard rule to present, though.

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