Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[hela]

Dear teachers,

Are all of these expressions possible here, please?

1) �Trapped indoors BY / BECAUSE OF the heavy rain Robert became increasingly bored.

2) I bought a lot of fruit IN / FROM the market.

Thank you for your help.
Hela

[pugachevV]

All of them are possible and quite common.

[hela]

Even "I bought a lot of fruit FROM the market" ?

[butane317]

I would use "I bought a lot of fruit at the market." But, they all make sense and mean the same thing. Using "from" implies that the food came directly from the market, where using "in" means that while you got it at the location of the market, it might have been from someone else. A different example illustrates this better:
"I bought a cookie from the building." The cookie came directly from the building, and this sentence would strike me as a little odd.
"I bought a cookie in the building." Someone in the building sold me a cookie. "I bought a cookie from a man in the building" would be more specific, but it isn't necessary.
The example with "market" is a little different, because while the market is a place, it is also the entire concept of buying and selling. A whole bunch of people selling stuff in the same place could be called a market, even though they may not be working together, and in that instance, the market isn't a concrete place or thing.
_________________
Definitions of words I give are the definitions as I learned them and as I use them in everyday life. I am from the midwest area of America. People speaking English in other parts of the world, or even America, may use the words differently than I do.

[pugachevV]

I concur with butane317 and as you know English is a very flexible language capable of many subtle variations in meaning that are sometimes not possible to translate exactly into other languages.