Korean Job Discussion Forums

[xtchr]

My co-teacher wants to know the difference between the following two sentences. He's preparing exams for the week after Chuseok.

1. Even Americans don't know all English words.

2. Even Americans don't know some English words.

He says that you can't use 'some' with a negative statement, and that No.2 is wrong.

It's Friday, and I'm tired, so I'm no help to him whatsoever , but if anyone can help me out with explaining what's what, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks

[poet13]

#2 doesn't make sense.

[gang ah jee]

Even your co-teacher doesn't know English.

[ajuma]

I think it has to do with what we "hear" to be correct and what is actually correct. If we were having a conversation, #2 would sound ok, but grammatically, you co-teacher is right. The rule is not to use "some" in a negative sentence.

[gang ah jee]

[cubanlord]

[gang ah jee]

[cubanlord]

[Woland]

Both sentences are grammatical. Grammaticality has nothing to do with factualness or probability of occurrence.

Your co-teacher is thinking of the so-called rule that bars 'some' in sentences with negation:

He knows something
He doesn't know anything
*He doesn't know something

I don't know the details of this. I'm not going to look it up. I'm off in a day for a holiday and have other things to do than go to my office and research this. But I know that this so-called rule does not hold as a generality. I'm fairly certain that it is a question of scope, but the details aren't mine anymore.

Just tell your co-teacher that, like so many other "rules" s/he was taught about English, this one is wrong. (My students are always amazed when I present examples destroying previously held beliefs about English. I'm amazed at the nonsense that persists over time.)

cubanlord, your example a few posts up is actually quite good, as is gaj's podophile one. Both are grammatical and show the use of 'some' in a negative sentence. Pull up some more and you can work out the generaliziation on your own.

[dodgybarnet]

Despite my grammar abilities being worse than a dyslexic vole, I'll throw in my two cents from a logic perspective:

1. Even Americans don't know all English words.

MEANS: Yanks � dont know � all possible words

2. Even Americans don't know some English words.

MEANS: Yanks � dont know � a few words
MEANS: Yanks � DO know � many words

(2) is kinda like a double negative.
Do I get a cookie?

.

[tabbyfoof]

1. Even Americans don't know all English words.

2. Even Americans don't know some English words.

First, a warning that I'm still sleepy. I started thinking about what context I'd use them in. I might use the first one if I were reassuring someone who thought he had an insufficient vocabulary. I'd be contrasting Americans with other nationalities (whose native language isn't English). In the second, I think I'd be focusing on particular words that are especially hard (and I'd consider this analogous to "There are some English words that even Americans don't know" but turning the first one around like that sounds freaky).

1. You shouldn't feel bad about having trouble with this article from Harper's. I mean, you're Korean and you only started learning English four days ago. Even Americans don't know all English words.

2. Yeah, even Americans don't know some English words. "Suprasegmental" is a real bugger of a word, as is "dimorphism." Good on you for being word-curious enough to look them up, Cheol-soo. (By the way, I'm not sure "word-curious" is an accepted term, but my high school English teacher used to say that all time, usually complaining that we weren't....)

Here's another example of the same kind of construction: "Even my dog, the very same animal who once attempted to ingest an LP of the Beatles' Greatest Hits, doesn't like some foods, like tofu salad or my homemade biscuits." Replace "doesn't like" with "eschews" or "dislikes" and there's no reasoning problem, is there?

So maybe the times we DON'T use "some" with negatives is when it's talking about an indefinite (relatively small) quantity of something like this:

X I don't want some potato chips shaped like pirates.
or
X She didn't have some marijuana in her car--the cops lied!

But the pedophile and cat examples and the examples I gave are with "some" used in a different way. I'm not articulate enough to define it very well, but it replaces items in a category denoted by the noun that follows it that we can give specific examples of.

O Even martial arts masters can't do some things, like fly.
O My aunt Clara Mae doesn't like some things southerners normally do; she never eats grits or drinks iced tea.

Oh, and we use "some" with a negative in a case like this ("any" is possible too, I think....): "I don't want some ax-wielding maniac to come and hack up our furniture so I'm locking the door."

[Atassi]

[sjk1128]

There are several definitions of "some." Carefully review the following definitions I robbed from Miriam-Webster Online:
2 b : being of an unspecified amount or number <give me some water> <have some apples>
4 : being at least one -- used to indicate that a logical proposition is asserted only of a subclass or certain members of the class denoted by the term which it modifies

In your examples, sentence 1 is not ambiguous because the definition of "all" cannot be in question. Sentence 2 is ambiguous because we cannot hear any voice inflection. Without such a cue, it's meaning might be Miriam's 2b or 4 above. Certainly, definition 2b seems obviously untrue. Definition 4 in the same sentence renders an obviously true statement.

In context, it seems to me that the meaning of the sentences might be close to the same, particularly if the voice inflection were appropriate:

1. Even Americans don't know all English words.
= every English word in existence

2. Even Americans don't know some English words.
= at least one word out of all the many English words in existence