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Chan-Seung Lee
Joined: 03 Dec 2005
Posts: 1032
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 Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 6:16 pm Post subject: occur vs happen |
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| Quote: |
1.What happened about that party they were planning?
2.What occurred about that party they were planning? |
Someone says that #1 is right but #2 is not correct because 'occur' cannot be used as a question sentence.
But I looked up an example, 'When did the accident occur?', in my English dictionary. So I cannot agree with someone's theory. As a native speaker, what do you think of it?
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Yinglish
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
Posts: 99
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| Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 3:36 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| 'When did the accident occur?' |
"Occur" can be used interchangeably with "happen"; however, when talking about a specific time or event, "occur" is used. See the quoted sentence above.
http://www.answers.com/topic/occur?ff=1 |
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lotus
Joined: 25 Jan 2004
Posts: 862
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| Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 10:57 pm Post subject: |
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Hi Chan-Seung Lee,
We sometimes say interchangeably:
When did it happen?
When did it occur?
When did this happen?
When did this occur?
Your original sentence probably should be:
1.What happened (to) that party they were planning?
2.What occurred (to) that party they were planning?
#1 makes sense, #2 does not. That is because "What happened?" here means "what went wrong?" It's a rhetorical question. The person is asking what happened to the plan that went awry and not what happened in the party. He was not concerned about what might have occurred at the party, but what went wrong with the planning of the party. That is why occurred does not work in the second sentence.
--lotus
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War does not make one great --Yoda |
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