Timeline for Does "I saw a blue car and bus" mean "blue bus" or any coloured bus?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
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| Sep 26, 2023 at 18:56 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | For an example of the version with a verb: "I saw a blue car and wept". But to be fair, the question did say it only concerns cases where the last word has been parsed as a noun. So thankfully the questioner ruled out the "fruit flies like a banana" scenario, where it's potentially ambiguous what's a verb. | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 18:35 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | I say "all" - that's a complete lie. I accept "I ate a piece of toast and bacon" (also I accept, with an indefinite article, "a piece of toast and some bacon"). And I accept the astronomical ones, although to me "I saw the moon and star" implies you saw something like an Islamic flag. Otherwise it couldn't be the star. But what I meant was, I reject all of your omitted articles in lists of vehicles :-) | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 18:28 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | @J D: I wonder if there's some regional/dialect difference here. All the acceptable examples you give sound bad to me. I simply would never answer the question, "What colour vehicles did you see today?" with "I saw a blue car and bus", if the fact was I saw one blue car and one blue bus. I would edit any document going across my desk that said that. I'm in the UK, hence "color" -> "colour", and maybe this is the same. FWIW if the question was just "What vehicles did you see?" then I might say, "I saw a car, a truck, and a bus" but never "I saw a car, truck and bus". | |
| Sep 25, 2023 at 18:02 | comment | added | J D | I decided given the range of answers to share my own ell.stackexchange.com/a/341957/124213 and given your advanced interest in language Grice's maxim's might be of some interest to you in reasoning about language. | |
| Sep 25, 2023 at 17:43 | comment | added | J D | has exactly the same structure and is equally as sensible and it would be non-grammatical to include an article because 'bacon' is a mass noun. Articles are tricky and subtle, and often not required. "I saw a star" Ok. "I saw star". Not. "I saw the stars". Ok. "I saw stars". Ok too. "I saw the moon and star". Ok too. There's another example where it's absolutely natural to drop an article for brevity. "I saw a car and bus on the road". That works. "I washed a car and bus earlier." Yeah, I don't think your claim holds any weight. | |
| Sep 25, 2023 at 17:39 | comment | added | J D | I'm not downvoting, but as a native speaker of linguistic competency, I'd say that it would be perfectly natural to say "blue car and bus" in certain contexts. For instance "What color vehicles did you see today?" -> "I saw a blue car and bus.", "I saw a blue car, truck, and bus." It sounds natural to my ear to omit on both. The use of other articles would be redundant, particularly in the latter example. Also, just because there is non-standard usage, you can't declare something non-grammatical. "I saw a blue car and bus" is certainly grammatical. "I ate a piece of toast and bacon"... | |
| Sep 25, 2023 at 5:04 | comment | added | Flater | The core premise of this answer is wrong, articles can be omitted due to repetition. "English requires articles before nouns" is plain wrong, as evidenced by your own usage of "English", "articles" and "nouns" in that very sentence. "except when it doesn't, but let's not dive into that rabbit hole right now" is a cop out as this is the core focus of your answer, which for some unexplained reason you willfully don't address. Then you continue with explaining that "blue" could be omitted due to repetition, somehow still willfully ignoring that the same applies to the article itself. | |
| Sep 24, 2023 at 9:39 | history | answered | Ilmari Karonen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |