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agarwalmanoj2000
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by agarwalmanoj2000 Sun Feb 26, 2012 10:29 pm

llzzyy234 Wrote:I chose (E) because I prefer the expression: "cities in the United States". Is it better than "United States cities" or I'm just lucky?


Both "cities in the United States" are "United States cities" are correct. As "United States cities" is more concise I prefer it over "cities in the United States".

Anyways, we cannot use them in this problem to get the correct answer.
RonPurewal
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by RonPurewal Sat Mar 03, 2012 9:16 am

llzzyy234 Wrote:I chose (E) because I prefer the expression: "cities in the United States". Is it better than "United States cities" or I'm just lucky?


lucky.
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Re:

by josefdong Sat Dec 07, 2013 3:08 am

RonPurewal Wrote:the correct answer here is still pretty ugly, so let's criticize the four incorrect choices.



Hi Ron, I think in B and C, "the river in many cities in the US." is wrong because it is not a specific river.

Also, in C, it refers to the river, illogically pointing out that a single river just flows across many cities in the US. including San Antonio.

Are these above good reasons to eliminate B and C, besides other errors?
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Re: Re:

by RonPurewal Sat Dec 07, 2013 11:06 am

josefdong Wrote:Hi Ron, I think in B and C, "the river in many cities in the US." is wrong because it is not a specific river.


Yeah -- that construction seems to imply that one river ("the river") goes through all of the cities considered in the problem. That's not very reasonable.
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Re: Re:

by RonPurewal Sat Dec 07, 2013 11:06 am

Note -- It's not the singular "river" by itself that creates the problem. The problem comes from the whole construction "the river in many cities...", which suggests that one river flows through all of the cities in question (as mentioned above).
If you don't have a construction like that, then the use of the singular is perfectly respectable. For instance, the following two sentences are fine:

In many cities, downtown is gradually being supplanted by the suburbs as the center of commerce, but in New York it is still the heart of all major businesses in the area.
(it = just "downtown", so this is ok. If the first part said "the downtown areas of many cities", then a pronoun couldn't be used anymore for New York's downtown.)

In most animals the lungs must exclusively take in air or exclusively expel it at any one time, but in birds they can do both simultaneously.
("they" = "the lungs". If the first part had said "the lungs of most animals", then you couldn't use "they" anymore; you'd have to use "those of birds" or something similar.)
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by CrystalSpringston Mon Oct 26, 2015 2:20 pm

JonathanSchneider Wrote:No, "few" means "few," not "no." I'm not sure where you picked that up, but be careful. "Few" actually implies some small positive amount.



I still have question on the "few". I leant that both few and little mean rare.
Eg: I have few skirts: almost means I have no skirts.
So usually, I treat the sentences that contain few or little as negative sentences.

If few implies some small positive amount, as explained above, what is the difference between few and a few ?

Thank you
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by tim Sat Nov 07, 2015 10:25 pm

It's mainly the negative connotation, as you already observed.

"I have a few Star Wars Lego sets." Cool, I have a few of them.

"I have few Star Wars Lego sets." I'm not happy because the number is so small.
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by CrystalSpringston Sun Nov 08, 2015 3:50 pm

tim Wrote:It's mainly the negative connotation, as you already observed.

"I have a few Star Wars Lego sets." Cool, I have a few of them.

"I have few Star Wars Lego sets." I'm not happy because the number is so small.


Thank you Tim.
Happy I am on track.
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by tim Tue Nov 17, 2015 5:45 am

You're welcome!
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by VyacheslavN791 Sun Dec 06, 2015 4:47 pm

Hi, could you, please, help me to find a mistake in my explanation:

We have answer D
In few United States cities today, a river is the focal point of urban life, but the river in San Antonio
where
"a river is the focal point of urban life" – is the main clause
"In few United States cities today" – modifies a river
I can change a position of modifier "In few..." to make my point clearer
A river in few United States cities today is the focal point of urban life, but the river in San Antonio

For me, there is a pretty parallel comparison between a river in US cities and the river in San Antonio.

Thank you in advance
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by RonPurewal Wed Dec 09, 2015 10:23 am

vyacheslav, you seem to be saying this:
"These things look parallel after I completely rearrange them."

you know what this implies about the things before you rearrange them, right?
(:
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by RonPurewal Wed Dec 09, 2015 10:24 am

also, there shouldn't be a parallel structure here anyway.

think about what the sentence is saying.
the point of the sentence is, basically, "River-centric cities are RARE these days, but san antonio is one of those rare examples."
there's no 'thing #1 and thing #2' here.
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by VyacheslavN791 Wed Dec 09, 2015 10:29 am

Hi, Ron, thank you, what I took from your answer - meaning beats parallelism in this case.

You meant to say, answer D is grammatically correct, but changes intended meaning of a sentence?
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by RonPurewal Wed Dec 09, 2015 11:15 am

the point is this:
• the sentence is supposed to say something.
• D doesn't say that thing.
• therefore, D is wrong.
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Re: Unlike many United States cities, where a river is no longer

by RonPurewal Wed Dec 09, 2015 11:15 am

D is also, more generally, a nonsense construction. i'll try to explain, but note that i'm going well beyond the actual scope of this exam here.

↓↓↓ YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS ON THE EXAM ↓↓↓

'few' is a negative construction. in this sense it works exactly like 'no'.
my point will probably be easier to understand if i use examples with 'no' instead.

consider the following statement. (i have no idea whether this is actually true; that's not the point here.)
No animal has a green tongue.

this is a negative statement.
because it is fundamentally a statement about something that DOES NOT exist, the MAIN SENTENCE must contain a negative construction.
e.g.,
No animal has a green tongue.
In no species of animal is the tongue green.
You cannot find an animal with a green tongue.

the main point is that you CANNOT write a sentence like this:
*In no animal, the tongue is green. (NONSENSE SENTENCE)
this isn't the easiest thing to explain on a forum, but i think you can see the problem here: the MAIN SENTENCE here is "the tongue is green", which is an affirmative sentence. it's no longer a negative sentence.
thus there are 2 problems:
1/ the sentence has lost its fundamental meaning,
2/ "in no animal"—something that's clearly central to the meaning of the sentence—has been added as an inconsequential modifier. (when a modifier is separated by commas, the sentence should retain the same fundamental meaning if it is taken away.)

hopefully this makes sense.
but even if it doesn't, that's still okay, because /1/ you can eliminate the choice for reasons you already understand, and /2/ YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS ON THE EXAM.

↑↑↑ YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS ON THE EXAM ↑↑↑