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sabrinak
Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 146
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 Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2009 12:26 am Post subject: sound or sounds? |
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Hello,
Thank you for your valuable explanations.
I have another qeustion:
"The lady head weird sounds. She followed the sound/the sounds."
Here I guess "the sounds" are correct. Am I right?
I need your help. Thanks. |
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 1:40 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
"The lady head weird sounds. She followed the sound/the sounds."
Here I guess "the sounds" are correct. Am I right? |
We routinely use the word sound as both a countable and an uncountable noun. She heard multiple distinct sounds (countable). She also heard sound (uncountable). The countable noun just puts more emphasis on the fact that there were in fact a number of distinct sounds. That doesn't mean that we can not also refer to the sound in an uncountable manner. You could actually use either one here with no damage to the meaning.
Having said that, however, I would probably tend to use sounds (countable) in this sentence for no other reason than the fact that I just referred to them that way in the previous sentence. That is, I would do it for reasons of continuity rather than grammaticality.
Greg |
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