natural language?

[doingresearch]

I checked out my supervisor's editing. She corrected " These mentioned literatures do not clarify ...." by crossing out the word mentioned. I wonder if this can make the langaueg more natural or not. I am pretty sure it is grammartically corrected. :-|

 

[Tdol]

It doesn't work for me- how about 'These sources do not clarify...'?

 

[BobK]

Sounds better... but I still don't understand how you can clarify 'natural language' (although you can clarify its meaning). Perhaps this is what the supervisor had trouble with:?:

b

 

[chester_100]

If you change it to above-mentioned you can solve the problem.
You can also use said as an adjective.
Aforementioned will do the trick too, but it's only used in formal context.

Literatures doesn't seem to be correct. It's an uncountable noun and has a plural sense. So when you use this word, you actually refer to a number of things like books and articles related to a usually single subject.

And yes, it can make your language more natural. I know perfectly what you mean by natural!

 

[Tdol]

Sounds better... but I still don't understand how you can clarify 'natural language' (although you can clarify its meaning). Perhaps this is what the supervisor had trouble with:?:

b

I assumed that natural refers to the phrasing and not the clarification inside the text. ;-)

 

[BobK]

I assumed that natural refers to the phrasing and not the clarification inside the text. ;-)

Maybe so. I am predisposed to read 'natural language' as having the technical meaning used by students of linguistics - language systems used by people (as opposed to, say, 'machine language').

b

PS This technical usage is common in academe, which is another reason for avoiding the expression if it doesn't have the specialist meaning. ;-)

 

[Jaskin]

Hi,

Please note I'm not a teacher nor a native speaker.

Isn't "these mentioned" a repetition ?
I think that was the reason for crossing out "mentioned".

Cheers,

 

[BobK]

Doh ;-) :up: Of course, you're right. If doingresearch had used "", I would have known what the question was about!

You could use either 'The <nouns> mentioned' or 'These <nouns>'. (I didn't say 'literatures' because it sounds odd, though it might well be justified by the context.

b

 

[doingresearch]

Many thax to all replies. There are good suggestion more than expected. I got that to use "mentioned" before noun could be repetitive ( which this may link to my understanding of "not natural in English writing". The word "literature" is sufficently defined by its context ( which was not shown her), I presume.;-)