People love to....

[Banglardon]

Do all the following three sentences mean the same? Where should I put the preposition phrase.

1- In India, people love to eat mangoes.

2- People in India love to eat mangoes.

3- People love to eat mangoes in India.

 

[emsr2d2]

1 and 2 mean the same - that everyone who lives in India loves to eat mangoes.
3 means that some unspecified people love to eat mangoes only when they are in India.

Which meaning did you intend?

 

[Banglardon]

1 and 2 mean the same - that everyone who lives in India loves to eat mangoes.
3 means that some unspecified people love to eat mangoes only when they are in India.

Which meaning did you intend?

I wanted to mean the first one.

 

[Banglardon]

Thank you. Here is another example. I think in this context they mean the same. Am I right?


A - Farmers are protesting in India.

B - Farmers in India are protesting.

C - In India, farmers are protesting.

 

[GoesStation]

Yes.

 

[jutfrank]

To help you analyse these sentences, I've used the following colour key: The blue part is where. The red part is who. The green part is what.

1- In India, people love to eat mangoes.

2- People in India love to eat mangoes.

3a- People love to eat mangoes in India.

Hopefully, you can see how sentence 2 differs in meaning from the other two in that in India is not a separate constituent of the sentence but a defining part of the entire noun phrase that forms the sentence subject (the red part)—that is, it gives us information about who the sentence is about. Sentences 1 and 3 differ not in meaning but rather in the informational structure of the sentence. They have the same parts but in a different order.

Note though that sentence 3 can take an alternative analysis:

3b- People love to eat mangoes in India.

 

[Phaedrus]

Do all the following three sentences mean the same? Where should I put the preposition phrase.

1- In India, people love to eat mangoes.
2- People in India love to eat mangoes.
3- People love to eat mangoes in India.

1 and 2 mean the same - that everyone who lives in India loves to eat mangoes.
3 means that some unspecified people love to eat mangoes only when they are in India.

Sentence (3) is ambiguous. It can mean what ems says it means, and it can also mean what (1) means.

When it means what (1) means, the prepositional phrase (in India) is a sentence modifier.

A sentence modifier can generally come at beginning or at the end of a sentence.

 

[Phaedrus]

3 means that some unspecified people love to eat mangoes only when they are in India.

I read (3) and (1) as generalizations about people in general, not about "some unspecified people." Just to clarify my last post, (3) can mean (a) or (b):

(a) People love to eat mangoes when they are in India.
(b) It is true in India that people love to eat mangoes.

Interestingly, (3) has a third possible meaning, as well, in which the PP in India is an adjunct/modifier of the NP mangoes.

(c) People love to eat mangoes that are in India.

Reading (b) is what Subhajit123's (a.k.a. Bangladoron's) sentence (1) means unambiguously.