In the Thai Cloze Test, why is "another" the correct answer for "One problem invites _____"?
Here is the question:
Problems that teenagers are faced with today are multifarious but interrelated in many cases. One problem invites (another/others/the other/other/the others), then leads to more problems.
The answers is another. Why "another" is correct?
There are two ways to answer this question- from a syntactic/semantic point of view, and by treating this as a reference to an English idiom.
The English idiom is "one thing leads to another", which in itself suggests that a chain of events takes place, generally outside the control of the people involved.
Looking at the syntax, the word must be a pronoun or noun. This rules out other because it is a determiner: you can talk about "other problems" or "other things" but you can't use "other" on its own.
You can only use "the other" when there are only two possibilities- for example hands... "His phone was in one hand and a pack of cigarettes was in the other". As it states in the first sentence, there are young people face a lot more than two problems.
"the others" would mean "all of the other problems": this does not work because the speaker subsequently refers to "more problems" that follow on from the second one.
another can be a determiner or pronoun meaning "one more person or thing or an extra amount". This meaning would work, and the pronoun form would fit syntactically.
"Other" is usually used to describe something which is distinct from something previously mentioned. "Another" is similar, in that it refers to something previously mentioned, but it suggests one of the same type. For example:
"I ate Italian food and tried many things other than pasta dishes." -- Dishes which are distinctly different from pasta dishes
"I loved their breadsticks so much I had another." -- I ate an additional breadstick of the same kind.
Another is correct here, because we're talking about a problem not unlike the previous mentioned.
