the wives of all the doctors

[navi tasan]

1) In our city, every doctor's wife is highly educated.
2) In our city, the wife of every doctor is highly educated.

3) In our city, all doctors' wives are highly educated.
4) In our city, the wives of all doctors are highly educated.

5) In our city, all the doctors' wives are highly educated.
6) In our city, the wives of all the doctors are highly educated.

Which of these imply that all the doctors in our city are married?
Which couldn't be used if there were unmarried doctors in our city?

Gratefully,
Navi

 

[GoesStation]

None of them tells me that every doctor is married. Or that every doctor is a heterosexual male (which seems statistically unlikely unless it's an extremely small city).

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

1) In our city, every doctor's wife is highly educated.
2) In our city, the wife of every doctor is highly educated.

3) In our city, all doctors' wives are highly educated.
4) In our city, the wives of all doctors are highly educated.

5) In our city, all the doctors' wives are highly educated.
6) In our city, the wives of all the doctors are highly educated.

Which of these imply that all the doctors in our city are married?

None of them. They only refer to doctors who have wives. They leave out single doctors and doctors with husbands.

Which couldn't be used if there were unmarried doctors in our city?

They can all be used, regardless of whether there are unmarried doctors or doctors with husbands.

Gratefully,
Navi

All your sentences are grammatical. None includes all the city's doctors. They only include doctors with wives.

 

[jutfrank]

You're asking whether in sentences 1, 3, and 5 every applies to doctor or wife, right? You've written them as deliberately ambiguous, haven't you?

If every applies to doctor, it means that all doctors are married. There are no unmarried doctors.
If every applies to wife, it doesn't mean that all doctors are married. There may be unmarried doctors, or doctors who are married to husbands.

In 2, 4, and 6 it applies to doctor only. That means that all doctors are married in those sentences.

The application of the reference word the has no bearing on the logic.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

. . . If every applies to doctor, it means that all doctors are married. There are no unmarried doctors. . .

Are you sure? The way I read the sentences, all of them are about every doctor's wife, not every doctor: Is there a doctor's wife who isn't well educated? No, there isn't. All of the wives of doctors are well educated.

I do see what you mean: The even-numbered sentences might be asking us to assume that all the city's doctors have wives. But isn't there a bit of room for ambiguity in the phrasing? And every doctor having a wife is hardly possible. So I feel more secure understanding them to mean the same thing as the odd-numbered sentences.

 

[jutfrank]

Are you sure? The way I read the sentences, all of them are about every doctor's wife, not every doctor

Sentences 1, 3, and 5 were deliberately written to be ambiguous. I agree that it would be silly to interpret that the sentence is about every doctor rather than every wife, but that's what Navi Tasan is wondering—is such an interpretation semantically possible? Yes, it is.

every [doctor's wife]
[every doctor]'s wife

This is just an exercise in logic and semantics. The OP is not particularly interested in usage.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you all very much,

Yes, Jutfrank is right. I was trying to find out the logic of the sentences. I was trying to find out how the syntax works. My examples were not very good, since we have homosexual doctors and women doctors. But Jutfrank, knowing my obsessions, managed to figure out what I was looking for.

I didn't construct the sentences to be ambiguous. I had the feeling that 2, 4 and 6 were not ambiguous, and the other three were. But I wasn't sure. I had written something and someone corrected me. I had used a sentence similar to the unambiguous ones where I actually needed my sentence to be ambiguous and someone corrected me. I couldn't figure out why that person had corrected what I had written. I agree that in context very few people will notice any problem with any of the sentences, but I think Jutfrank has figured out exactly what is going on here. So I think from a strictly syntactic point of view Jutfrank is correct, but in practice there's probably room for ambiguity in all of these cases.

A special thanks to Jutfrank. He spotted the problem. But I think my intention wasn't what he thinks it was.

Respectfully,
Navi

 

[Tdol]

Just to throw a spanner into the works- what about women doctors married to women?

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Just to throw a spanner into the works- what about women doctors married to women?

In Navi's town, their wives are all well educated, too.

 

[jutfrank]

Just to throw a spanner into the works- what about women doctors married to women?

If the doctors are married to women, then their spouses are wives not husbands, so it makes no difference to the logic in any way.