[General] He likes basketball except for soccer-good English?

[jiamajia]

He likes basketball except for soccer.

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Do you accept the usage of 'except for' as good English to mean 'in addition to' or 'apart from' in the above sentence?

It is said to be listed in a Longman Dictionary. However I have not found it so far.

Thank you.

 

[Tullia]

He likes basketball except for soccer.

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Do you accept the usage of 'except for' as good English to mean 'in addition to' or 'apart from' in the above sentence?

It is said to be listed in a Longman Dictionary. However I have not found it so far.

Thank you.

Except for can mean apart from, but not in the context you have tried to use it. It only means apart from when the two items used are related and one is member of the category expressed by the other. You could have said "He likes all sports except soccer." as "soccer" is a member of the category "sports".

In your example soccer is not a member of the category basketball and so it doesn't work.

You could also say "She likes most animals except cats." as cats are a type of animal/member of the category "animal".


You could aso say "You did very good work except for this one mistake." as the mistake was part of the work - maybe not technically part of the category work, but I hope you see the relationship works in the same way?


Right now I can't think of a possible way "except" could be used to mean "in addition to". I'm pretty sure this isn't possible, and I've just checked Collins and Merriam Webster, and neither dictionary lists it as a possible meaning.

 

[jiamajia]

Except for can mean apart from, but not in the context you have tried to use it. It only means apart from when the two items used are related and one is member of the category expressed by the other. You could have said "He likes all sports except soccer." as "soccer" is a member of the category "sports".

In your example soccer is not a member of the category basketball and so it doesn't work.

You could also say "She likes most animals except cats." as cats are a type of animal/member of the category "animal".


You could aso say "You did very good work except for this one mistake." as the mistake was part of the work - maybe not technically part of the category work, but I hope you see the relationship works in the same way?


Right now I can't think of a possible way "except" could be used to mean "in addition to". I'm pretty sure this isn't possible, and I've just checked Collins and Merriam Webster, and neither dictionary lists it as a possible meaning.

Thank you for the detailed reply. Is my following understanding correct:
'except for' can be replaced by 'apart from' in every case, but not vice versa ?

 

[Tullia]

Thank you for the detailed reply. Is my following understanding correct:
'except for' can be replaced by 'apart from' in every case, but not vice versa ?

Yes, I think you could replace except for with apart from in every case I can think of right now, and certainly in all the examples in the above post.

I can think of times I would use apart from where except for wouldn't work, which are when it means "in addition to" or "as well as" but perhaps with the implication that the two items are not directly related.

Quite apart from the hard work it would require, it simply would take too long to do.
As well as being very hard work, it would also take too long to long to do.

Apart from a newspaper, do you want me to pick up anything else from the shops?
Other than the newspaper, (which I already know you want) do you need me to pick anything else up from the shops?


Does that help?