Timeline for "All rooms" versus "all the rooms"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
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| Aug 2, 2011 at 11:10 | comment | added | Colin Fine | senderle, I think that what @FumbleFingers is unhappy with is your use of "shortening", and of "source" sentence: the implication is that there is a full form, and these are shortened versions of it, hence a hierarchy of "more full" (and by implication "more correct") sentences. This is not true - the shorter and longer forms have equal status grammatically. You may not have intended this hierarchy, but it is strongly suggested by your wording. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 21:54 | comment | added | senderle | @FumbleFingers, that must be the source of our disagreement. I'm thinking of "idiomatic" as meaning "linguistic usage that is grammatical and natural to native speakers of a language." You'll have to scroll down a bit to find that one; so perhaps I am using "idiomatic" somewhat idiomatically (in your sense) :). | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 21:13 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | As it happen, I think "Thank you" is an idiomatic shortening, since it stands for "I thank you". The possibility that there's also an implicit "...for what you have done" does not seem to me to be idiomatic. But my definition of "idiomatic" may differ from yours. In general I consider idiomatic usage to be that which deviates grammatically and/or semantically from standard usage (i.e. - doesn't follow standard grammar, or doesn't mean exactly what it seems to). | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 20:31 | comment | added | senderle | @FumbleFingers, I don't think there's anything questionable about it. Grammatically speaking, it's no different from what happens when one says, for example, "thank you." That's a full sentence; the subject, "I," is implicit, and inferred from context. Likewise, here the modifier "in this hotel" is left implicit, as is, perhaps, the modifier "available for hire." Or perhaps there's some context in which "rooms" could indeed refer to the staff toilets; it all depends. But none of that has any bearing on the grammaticality of the sentences in question. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 17:35 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Well, you also say they're both "idiomatic shortenings", which seems at best "questionable" to me. You might as well say "rooms" is an idiomatic shortening of "rooms available for hire", since there will be other rooms in the building that don't have an internet connection, such as the staff toilets. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 17:33 | comment | added | senderle | @FumbleFingers, I'm not sure what I said that would imply that. I explicitly said that both are correct! | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 16:54 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | You seem to imply that OP's contructions are somehow "less grammatical" because they don't include "of" and/or "in this hotel", but I don't think this has any relevance to grammatical correctness. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 16:04 | history | answered | senderle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |