dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
|
 Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 10:43 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| Quote: |
| The students have to guess of what thing the person who is it is thinking by asking him or her at most 20 yes/no type questions. |
Believe it or not, this is technically grammatically correct. I would be hard-pressed to dream up a more convoluted way to say it, but it actually makes grammatical sense.
I suspect the part that is causing the confusion is the phrase the person who is it. Whoever wrote this sentence should have had enough sense to draw attention to the word it by capitalizing it, perhaps putting quotation marks around it, like so: "It." That's what you should do when you are using an ordinary word with a special or unusual meaning that is different from the common meaning. Otherwise, you cause confusion, which is what has happened here.
The word "It" here refers to a person with a specially designated role in a game. For example, in a common children's game known in the U.S. as Tag (and probably known by other names around the world), one child is designated as "It" and is tasked with chasing the other children around until he or she succeeds in touching one of them. At that moment, the child who is "It" shouts out "Tag! You're 'It'!" The game then continues with a new "It."
In Twenty Questions, it's the same idea--just a different game. The person who is "It" thinks of something, and the other players ask him or her a series of up to twenty questions in an effort to guess what the item is. In some versions of the game, they don't all have to be yes/no questions. For example, when I was a kid a common first question used to be "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?"
Anyway, how about this:
One person is designated as "It" and secretly thinks of some particular thing; then the other students must try to guess what "It" is thinking of by asking him or her a maximum of twenty yes/no questions.
It won't win a Pulitzer, but it's reasonably clear. 
| Quote: |
| 2.Rather than it, 'The students have to guess of what thing it is and who the person is by asking him or her at most 20 yes/no type questions.' is right? |
Nope, sorry.
Greg |
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
