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English still feels hard to explain when things sound natural and when they don't. You can say "there are some vendors in the street" and it sounds normal. But
by hbn 15d ago
English still feels hard to explain when things sound natural and when they don't.
You can say "there are some vendors in the street" and it sounds normal. But if you were to say "they are some vendors" it sounds weird. It's pretty firmly more natural to say "they are vendors."
- bradrn 15d agoOh, certainly, as is the case for any language! In the case you mention, I note that Huddleston & Pullum in their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language specifically call ‘some’ an existential determiner. As is usual with them, this is an insightful observation: you use ‘some <noun>’ specifically in order to say that there exists some set of things drawn from some larger set or in some configuration. You say ‘there are some vendors in the street’ because you’re drawing attention to their existence in the street (and indeed ‘there is/are’ is the prototypical English expression for existentials). You don’t say ‘they are some vendors’, because the use of ‘they’ implies some specific group of vendors already known to both speaker and listener — highlighting their existence again feels weird. (Of course, this analysis is still incomplete. At some point you simply have to list all the specific ways in which ‘some’ is used — which, indeed, is exactly what Huddleston & Pullum do. Furthermore I’m certain that there is some discourse context in which ‘they are some vendors’ would be natural, even though I haven’t managed to think of one just yet.)
- schoen 15d agoI'm not sure this is the best achievable example, but maybe: "The street vendors have decided to oppose the ordinance." "But I thought Mike and Jacob said they support the ordinance. And Julia! Aren't they vendors?" "They are some vendors, but most vendors take the opposite position."
- subarctic 15d agoThat one is more natural without the word "some" imo
- schoen 15d agoI agree, so it's still not an ideal example.
- lelanthran 15d agoDepends where the stress is. "They are some vendors, not all vendors" is natural. "They are vendors, not all vendors"is equally natural. Written without stress indicators, most dialog can sound unnatural.
- thaumasiotes 15d ago> "They are vendors, not all vendors" is equally natural. No it isn't. For example, I am a native speaker, and I have no idea what you wanted that sentence to say. There is no available contrast between the emphasized words, leaving me mystified as to why they're both emphasized. Looking up through the context, I think what you want is "They are vendors, but they aren't all vendors." That's still not a felicitous way to express it; you'd be better off with "They are vendors, but they aren't every vendor." (Because "They aren't all vendors" is most naturally interpreted to mean "not all of them are vendors", with all as an adverb, as opposed to "not all vendors are one of them", with all as a determiner.)
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- cwnyth 15d agoMore simply: "Some vendors support the ordinance, but most oppose it."
- beardyw 15d ago"Who are the noisy people outside?" "They are some vendors" seems natural to me, suggesting that the group of vendors is known to the person answering.
- mplanchard 15d agoThis sounds to me like something a native french speaker would say in english. I feel like most english speakers would respond, “They are vendors,” “Just some vendors,” “It’s some vendors,” or even just “Vendors,” but not “They are some vendors.”
- jrmg 15d agoAnd “they are some vendors” usually actually means “they are excellent vendors”!
- 1-more 15d agoReally depends on how you say “some”
- rectang 15d agoI will die on the hill that "SOME PIG" from Charlotte's Web was merely an existential determiner.
- OJFord 15d agoExceptional rather than excellent I'd say, i.e. not necessarily positively exceptional.
- chuckadams 15d agoEven more common with "the". "They are THE vendors", which is either to say that those are definitely the vendors referred to elsewhere, or that they represent the archetype of vendors (whatever that is). Language is weird.
- Izkata 14d agoYeah, definitely inflection-based. A more relaxed one would indicate "a small amount", which for the opposite could be directly swapped with "many".
- user43928 15d agoAnd doesn't "some vendors they are" mean the opposite?
- chuckadams 15d agoYes, unless Yoda you are.
- cycomanic 15d agoBack in the days when I had to take some latin for my studies, our lecturer always used to say "don't ask my why, latin might be more logical than most languages, but it's a language not math. Languages are not logical". It actually became a bit of a running gag because we still had some students who needed to ask why for every rule.