Timeline for “She left me for another woman” or “She left me for a woman”?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
6 events
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| Sep 29, 2012 at 7:21 | comment | added | ShreevatsaR | @MετάEd: (Also, whatever I or anyone else says about "another", none of it has bearing on, or leads to, the interpretation of "she left me for a woman" as "she left me for herself".) Language isn't always logical, and moreover even logically, the fact that "another" can mean "other than herself" doesn't imply anything about what happens when "another" is left out. To go back to my example, "Shane was happy to see an Australian in Cairo" does not under the natural interpretation suggest the possibility that it was himself that he saw. | |
| Sep 29, 2012 at 7:14 | comment | added | ShreevatsaR | @MετάEd: No, I wrote the first paragraph explicitly to clarify that "another" can mean either "other than herself" or "other than myself" — neither of the meanings necessarily follows. And I stand by the claim that depending on context, "another" can mean either of these things; that was the point of the examples. | |
| Sep 29, 2012 at 4:21 | comment | added | MetaEd | @ShreevatsaR The first paragraph of your answer claims that "another" qualifies "woman" to mean "other than herself". This is problematic. The problematic implication is that when the speaker leaves out the "another" then the meaning is that woman she left for could in fact be the woman herself. | |
| Feb 4, 2011 at 21:24 | comment | added | oosterwal | It could also mean that she left me for a woman, came back to me, then left me again for a different woman. | |
| Feb 4, 2011 at 11:57 | comment | added | CJM | +1 - The another refers to a woman other than herself. It's not entirely unusual for a woman to leave her partner for another man, but comparatively more unusual for a woman (who was previously considered heterosexual) to leave her male partner for a woman - hence the use of another to stress this fact. | |
| Feb 4, 2011 at 9:39 | history | answered | ShreevatsaR | CC BY-SA 2.5 |