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See this sentence:

Partner A will have a contract with our company with following missions:...

It can be written into two separate sentences:

  • Partner A will have a contract with our company.
  • The contract has the following missions:...

If I write

A contract with our company with following missions

like as in the first sentence, then would it cause a certain ambiguity or not?

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    Kati, you might be interested in our sister site, ELL, which is a good site for basic English questions. Please have a look at the quick tour of EL&U and ELL to determine where you can best be helped! Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 6:21
  • There are times when a noun can be preceded by two prepositions, such as in and to (which has become into) or from behind (the noise came from behind the wall). The two prepositions in your example (both with) each have their own noun (company and missions, respectively.) But your sentence starts with two articles (A and an). That is not grammatical. Also, missions should have an article before it. Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 6:30
  • a partner name "A"
    – Kiti
    Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 6:39
  • That is usually referred to as Partner A. Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 6:45
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    There's nothing incorrect or unusual about "A contract with our company with the following missions" as far as prepositions are concerned.
    – Kris
    Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 6:50

1 Answer 1

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A better wording would be:

... a contract with our company that has the following missions: ...

This eliminates the ambiguity about which noun with attaches to. Unless it's clear from context, when you have a string of prepositional phrases, each attaches to the noun immediately before it. For example, in

the house on the end of the street next to the river,

the street is next to the river, and not the house. You can fix this by inserting an and:

the house on the end of the street and next to the river.

So you could also fix the OP's sentence as follows:

a contract with our company and with the following missions: ...

but I don't like that as much in this case because the two with's are used in different senses.

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  • sool solution, thax u very much
    – Kiti
    Commented Jul 3, 2014 at 1:31

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