I spend one out of three that money on my family.

[moonlike]

Hi
Recently I came across this sentence in one of my students' writings. The whole sentence was this "If I won a jackpot, I'd spend one out of three that money on my family". I corrected it like this "If......,I'd spend one third of that on my family", or "If I.....,I'd spend one out of three parts.....".
However she couldn't accept. She insisted on her sentence and her justification was that how it's possible to say "One out of three winners...." but we can't say "one out of three that money". I was really confused and had no exact or grammar reason to justify the reason,although I know her sentence wasn't right. When I thought twice I came up with the following reason that I've made it up. Please correct me if I'm not right.
Money is uncountable so we can't use this structure "one out of .../three out of..." for uncountable nouns. So we can't say two out of three water. We should say two out of three glasses of water. I mean we have to make some quantifiers to make the uncountable nouns countable.
Thanks a lot.

 

[Barb_D]

That's right. Your use of "water" is a good analogy.

 

[bhaisahab]

Hi
Recently I came across this sentence in one of my students' writings. The whole sentence was this "If I won a jackpot, I'd spend one out of three that money on my family". I corrected it like this "If......,I'd spend one third of that on my family", or "If I.....,I'd spend one out of three parts.....".
However she couldn't accept. She insisted on her sentence and her justification was that how it's possible to say "One out of three winners...." but we can't say "one out of three that money". I was really confused and had no exact or grammar reason to justify the reason,although I know her sentence wasn't right. When I thought twice I came up with the following reason that I've made it up. Please correct me if I'm not right.
Money is uncountable so we can't use this structure "one out of .../three out of..." for uncountable nouns. So we can't say two out of three water. We should say two out of three glasses of water. I mean we have to make some quantifiers to make the uncountable nouns countable.
Thanks a lot.

Yes, I think that's a good enough explanation.