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 #2 (permalink) Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:27 am The others and others |
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| I would liker to reply to Polska's request and point out that others imply the rest of pets are dogs.So Polska assumes that there are only cats and dogs,but we are not sure whether the pets are cats and dogs only, maybe there are horses and some others. |
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Sultano
Guest
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| #3 (permalink) Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:39 am Others and the others |
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I agree with Sultano, why don't we say others are dogs?
because we don't know if there are other pets .what are pets? cats , dogs, horses, birds, ...etc.. so may be there are birds also why not so we should say others not the others. thanx a lot. |
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Jimmy
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| #4 (permalink) Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:08 am When can we say others without THE? |
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| Quote: | | There are eight pets in my house. Six are cats and the others are dogs. |
'The others' means the rest of the pets or the remaining pets, that is two, since there are eight pets in total. So now we do know there are no more animals kept in the house, apart from these. 'Others' is not specific and means 'some' of the others but not all. We could only have said 'others' if there had been more than eight, because 'others' is at least two.
In other words, there are not enough pets in the house to say: six are cats and others are dogs. But it could have been: six are cats and another is a dog. There would still be one left.
Let's hope I'm not confusing you more! |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2826
Location: Madrid, Spain
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| #5 (permalink) Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:32 am (the) others |
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Hi Polska,
To come back to your original question as to when we can use others without the. Let's talk about plants in the garden: Some plants can survive frost and snow, others must be protected. In that sentence I am talking about plants in general and others in that context simply means other plants - we don't know the names and we don't know how many.
Take a look at these two sentences: I bought 10 plants today. 6 were very cheap and the others (the other plants) were very expensive. In the second of those two sentences I use the because I am referring back to the word plants- I am if you like defining which others I am talking about. And that's after all why the is called the definite article.. If I had used the word others in the second sentence it would not have referred to anything and we wouldn't know to what the word others referred.
Just some thoughts
Alan
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Alan
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