the structure of this sentence

sarara · Post by **sarara** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:10 pm

Hi

I wrote a sentence and my friend said it's incorrect.
But we don't know how to correct this sentence.
Could somene help me?

I said : Eeverything changed but NOT you.
I mean, except you, everything changed

But my friend said it should be : Everything changed but you.

I said : a) Everything changed but you.
This is an incomplete sentence.
Evething changed but you (What)......

b) Everything changed but not you =
Everything changed but you didn't.
(these two are both correct and complete sentences)

Another example: I love no one but you, in this case,
I can say "but you".

What do you think??

Thanks~

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 8:56 am

Didn't Kylie Minogue do a song titled "Everything Changes (But You...)" or something similar?

Al · Post by Al » Wed Apr 14, 2004 11:51 am

You're both right.

'But' as simple conjunction would need 'not' after it to preserve sense and syntactically to act as pro-verb.

However, 'but' has another meaning, close to 'except'. In this case it can be seen as a preposition and so need only be followed by a noun phrase - in this case, 'you'.

Cheers, Al

hafez · Post by **hafez** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 1:08 pm

Duncan Powrie wrote:Didn't Kylie Minogue do a song titled "Everything Changes (But You...)" or something similar?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 2:14 pm

However, 'but' has another meaning, close to 'except'. In this case it can be seen as a preposition and so need only be followed by a noun phrase - in this case, 'you'.

Al is correct. There is something which is called, rather grandly, "textual ellipsis" in one of his examples. It means some words are omitted, but they can be grammatically replaced if the meaning is not clear.

Simple conjunction: Everything changes, but you do not change.

With a meaning of "except": Everything changes but you.

Note the omission of the comma in the second example.

Other examples of textual ellipsis might be:

Are you going out tonight?

Yes, I am! (= Yes I am going out tonight)