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Originally Posted by navi tasan Consider this sentence:
1-He went out with his friend.
Logically I think, the sentence implies that: either he has only one friend, or the listener knows who the friend in question is. But I think people often use that sentence when they want to say:
2-He went out with a friend of his.
which implies both that he has more than one friend and that the listener doesn't know who that friend is.
Is the distinction I make between 1 and 2 grammatically correct?
If it is, do people really use 1 instead of 2? |
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He went out with his friend.
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Usually, in ordinary conversation, the speaker would mention the name of the person in question. One reason he might not is that he doesn't want the listener to know who it is.
The two example sentences seem quite different to me, so I don't know why anybody would use one to mean the same thing as the other one.
BTW, you seem to use "listener" when you really mean "speaker". Am I wrong?
Regards,
RonBee
8)