we didn't know how many

[navi tasan]

Are these correct:

1) Tom was the physicist who had developed a number of new theories, but we didn't know how many. Jim was the physicist who had developed a number of new theories and we knew exactly how many.

2) The physicist who had developed a number of new theories and we knew how many presented his paper.

What is differentiating between Tom and Jim is the fact that we don't know how many theories Tom has devised, but we know exactly how many Tim has devised. I don't think the conjunctions 'and' and 'but' really work in the postmodifying clauses.

 

[Barque]

1) Tom was the physicist who had developed a number of new theories, but we didn't know how many. Jim was the physicist who had developed a number of new theories and we knew exactly how many.

It's grammatical, if there's a reason to use "the" rather than "a".

2) The physicist who had developed a number of new theories and we knew how many presented his paper.

This is ungrammatical. I don't understand what you're trying to say.

What is differentiating between Tom and Jim is the fact that we don't know how many theories Tom has devised, but we know exactly how many Tim has devised.

What do you mean? What has Tim got to do with Tom and Jim? Or did you just make a careless typo and type "Tim" instead of "Jim"? Tim's a name too, so it sounds like you're speaking about three people.

I don't think the conjunctions 'and' and 'but' really work in the postmodifying clauses.

You'll have to explain this with context. "And" and "but" depend on context and there's none here. In the right context, they can very definitely work.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you very much, Barque,

You are quite right about the typo, I am sorry. It was a bad msitake. There is no Tim in the story!

Consider this noun phrase:

"the physicist who had developed a number of new theories, but we didn't know how many".

Is it really a legitimate noun phrase?

Is "who had developed a number of new theories, but we didn't know how many" a legitimate restrictive relative clause?

We have two physicists: Jim and Tom. We knew that both have developed new theories. We knew how many new theories Jim had developed, but we didn't know how many new theories Tom had developed.

1) Tom was the physicist who had developed a number of new theories, but we didn't know how many. Jim was the physicist who had developed a number of new theories and we knew exactly how many.

In this sentence
who had developed a number of new theories, but we didn't know how many.
and
who had developed a number of new theories and we knew exactly how many

are both supposed to be restrictive relative clauses defining 'the physicist'.

I don't think conjunctions can be used that way within a relative clause. They can't be part of the relative clause. Here they are supposed to be, but I don't think the whole thing works.

I think that is why '2' doesn't work.

The sentences in '1' are grammatical sentences, but my contention is that they don't work in that context. The part coming after the conjunctions 'and' and 'but' are supposed to belong to the relative clause, but they actually don't.

 

[Tarheel]

@navi tasan I think your phrases and sentences are, grammatically speaking, perfectly fine. The problem might be possible confusion. However, since we are only talking about grammar here, that does not, I think, matter.