all together

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navi tasan

Key Member
Joined
Nov 19, 2002
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
Persian
Home Country
Iran
Current Location
United States
1-All of them cost five dollars.


Could this sentence mean:

All of them together cost five dollars.

Gratefully,
Navi.
 
Last edited:
It's ambiguous.
If you used "each" it would be clear.
"Together, they cost five dollars" would be clear.
 
Thank you very much Barb_D.

Is this one ambiguous as well:

2-They all cost five dollars.

Gratefully,
Navi.
 
Thank you very much Barb_D.

Is this one ambiguous as well:

2-They all cost five dollars.

Gratefully,
Navi.
Navi, when I answered the question, both of those sentences were in the original post.
It's very confusing to edit your original question after someone has answered.
 
Thank you all very much.

I apologize for the confusion. But I am not as guilty as I may seem.

When I first posted my question, there was only one sentence in it. I added the second one after a couple of minutes. Then, a very short time after posting, I say your reply. It read 'It's ambiguous'. I thought that you had seen my original post and not the edited version. I thought you had posted while I was editing my first post. The original post contained only one sentence. The edited one contained two. The problem was that you had written 'it' and not 'they'. Now I realize it was probably a slip; a slip that in other circumstances I would not have paid any attention to. But here, it became significant in that it was implying that there is only one sentence that was ambiguous. So I edited my post again. The post was edited twice. The last version was the same as the first one. Both contained one sentence. The second version, which is the one you saw, contained two.

I hope this is comprehensible.

My apologies again.
Navi.
 
It's ambiguous.
If you used "each" it would be clear.
"Together, they cost five dollars" would be clear.

Do you mean 'Each of them costs five dollars' would be clear?
 
That would be clear for me.
 
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