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The following is a problem from my textbook.
The following sentence has an error. Find it and correct it.
(1)[Most people] in the country (2)[would like] to own (3)[their house] (4)[some day].
It seems to me that there is no error in the sentence. Could anyone help me?
It's a bit pedantic (many if not most native speakers would cheerfully ignore this point), but from Grammar for Dummies...
to be a star some day is incorrect ... some day as two words refers to a particular day (Tuesday, for example) that isn't named. As a single word, someday means “at an unspecified time.”
Since some day is not an error (see below) , there is no actual error in the sentence
(1)[Most people] in the country (2)[would like] to own (3)[their house] (4)[some day].
When I first read the sentence, I thought the sentence would be much better with the adjective own before house in (3):
Most people in the country would like to own their own house some day
(as opposed to renting a house or just dreaming about owning a house). Note that user SevenSidedDie has aptly pointed out a reading that did not occur to me and which makes my objection largely based on a certain interpretation of the sentence. And this depends on how one uses or defines the verb own. In the USA, people are considered homeowners when they take out a loan on a house and repay the loan over a period of time, say 15 or 30 years. But there is a sense in which people do not really own their home until they have fully repaid the loan. Therefore my objection to (3) was based only on one reading of the sentence.
Most students brought their lunch (not lunches) to school because they did not like the food in the school cafeteria.
and
Most people wash their car (not cars) when it is sunny outside.
You can use lunches and cars but you don't have to.
and
Most students brought their backpack (not backpacks) to school and set it down in front of them.
Some speakers and/or websites may wish to insist that one should use someday rather than some day when talking about "some unknown day in the future."
However, there is plenty of support for using some day with this meaning.
First and foremost is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which defines both one day and some day as
On an unspecified day in the future
and then gives example sentences from the past 500+ years. I will quote sentences from only the past 200 to 300 years.
Since it is important to realize that both one day and some day have the same meaning in this context, here are four sentences from the OED with one day:
1738 Swift Compl. Coll. Genteel Conversat. 57 I'll make you one Day sup Sorrow for this.
1872 J. Morley Voltaire i. 2 A gracious, benevolent, and all-powerful being, who would one day redress all wrongs and recompense all pain.
1945 T. Williams 27 Wagons Cotton 217 One day I will look in the mirror and I will see that my hair is beginning to turn grey.
2001 M. Ravenhill Mother Clap's Molly House ii. viii. 85, One day I'm just gonna up and go.
Here are four sentences from the OED with some day:
1796 F. Burney Camilla IV. vii. xiii. 196 There's no keeping him. I may be tempted else to knock his brains out some day.
1853 E. Bulwer-Lytton My Novel III. ix. xvii. 95, I hope to return some day what you then so generously pressed upon me.
1953 D. Whipple Someone at Distance xx. 176 ‘Some day’, she said to herself, ‘I shall be in a position where these little people will not dare to disrespect me.’
2002 Chicago Tribune 8 Apr. i. 2/5 He'll do just fine. The kid might even make federal judge some day.
Basically, one day and some day are interchangeable when they refer to an unknown future day. There is no valid rule based on actual usage that says one must use someday in this context. The Free Dictionary redirects a search for 'some day' to 'one day' but then says they are synonyms:
one day also some day
in the future I'd like to go to Mexico one day.
(link)
In addition, Collins dictionary online makes no distinction between 'some day' and 'someday' other than that there are two spellings:
some day or someday
at a date in the future that is unknown or that has not yet been decided
⇒ He said he wants to be a supervisor some day.
⇒ He took her left hand, hoping that it would someday bear a gold ring on the third finger.
⇒ I hope someday we'll have enough money to retire.
⇒ Some day I'll be a pilot.
There is no "governing board" of English. It is the speakers of English who determine usage and 'correct usage'. For 500 years or more, English speakers have been using both one day and some day to refer to some unknown day in the future. Folks who insist that it must be someday are making up a rule, or perhaps passing on an invalid rule that someone taught them.
Thus, there is no actual error in the original sentence, as you have given it, with no context and without our knowing what the textbook might be trying to demonstrate with the sentence.
The sentence’s meaning is clear and therefore completely fine for informal conversational English.
Were I to pick nits, I would say the error is in (3): number agreement. The subject Most people and the possessive their are plural in number, but house is singular. No member of this majority wishes to own one single house collectively with all the rest. Rather, they would all like to own their own respective houses.
Attempt to edit the sentence for correctness and you will quickly see awkward, ambiguous constructions.
Most people in the country would like to own their houses some day.
Note the plural houses above. To my native ear, this is less clear than the original from the exercise in your textbook.
Most people in the country would like to own houses some day.
Removing the possessive their does sound more natural, but now it is unclear whether a member of the majority wants to own one or multiple houses—even though a native speaker would understand from context that the original means one house for each, or at least one per family.
Most people in the country would like to own their own houses some day.
Most people in the country would like to own their own respective houses some day.
Emphasizing with own their own that each family has an abode to themselves is one possibility. Using own their own respective is precise and should satisfy pedants, but at the cost of being tediously wordy and overly formal.
When you find yourself struggling with number agreement in English, see if you can reword the sentence to be both clear and concise.
Note that I was careful above to avoid possessives for individual members of the majority because it almost certainly includes men and women. Does each want to own his own home or own her own home? Typical of our sloppiness with number agreement, singular they, as in
Each member of the majority wants to own their own home.
would also be understandable. Although it is now considered old-fashioned, prescriptivist, and even sexist, formal English thirty years ago or more would have rendered it as
Each member of the majority wants to own his own home.
Note the use of his to convey possessive of someone with unknown gender. Maintaining number agreement but also being inclusive forces the more wordy
Each member of the majority wants to own his or her own home.
My suggestion would be to sidestep all of this fussiness with
Most people in the country would like to be homeowners some day.
Although I can be pedantic about language, I reject the quibbling over an allegedly meaningful distinction between some day and someday. This is an area where English spelling is fluid. The progression usually starts out with separate words (e.g., data base), then hyphenated (data-base), and finally as a single word (database). For an example even further back, today both to-day and to day are anachronistic.
Finally, I find this example to be a poor choice of exercise on the part of your textbook’s author. As answers to this question note, native speakers are having to look hard for the error and are embarrassed at the exceedingly minor issues we raise. On the other hand, for advanced students of English, thinking through the subtleties of the different possible wordings shows solid command of the language.
By chance is the correct answer in the back of the textbook? Is the author concerned about separating the adverb? If so
Most people in the country would like to some day own their house.
Knowing the topic of this exercise’s section in the textbook may also hint at the intended answer.
I contend that there is nothing wrong with the grammar here. The textbook might try to exercise some invented rule (see the discussion about "some day" vs. "someday"), but the sentence is correct and clear as it is. This is a very good question to stir a discussion, but as a textbook exercise it seems inadequate.
A logic purist might argue that point the sentence is badly formed because of number disagreement: "their house" refers to a specific house, so a non-human reader (e.g., a simple text-parsing software algorithm) might interpret the sentence as if "most people in the country" live in a specific house. This interpretation is counter-intuitive for human readers who apply some knowledge about "people", "house", and "country". The typical reader will read this sentence without thinking about any ambiguity, so I wouldn't say it's incorrect.
I originally thought that changing "their house" to "their houses" would be an improvement, but that brings out another logic-purist ambiguity, in how many houses each member of "people" may have (although a human reader will probably have no concern).
Possibly either "their home" or "a house" and not "their house".
"Their house" is only correct if they already own it. If they don't own it, it's not "their house". "Their home" would be correct, because even a rented home is your home.
On the other hand, this is desperately looking for mistakes. The sentence is completely understandable and no native speaker will correct you if you say it.
If you look at all the answers here, some contradicting each other, it seems to be an awful question for a textbook. And as in many other cases, you can't just say "this sentence is incorrect". You'd have to say "This is what the sentence is supposed to express. Does it express that? "
I would say the error is in (3). I would write the sentence to say,
Most people in the country would like to own their own house some day.
I guess the phrase "their house" could be construed to be unclear, denoting ownership already and "their own" is usually said so that we know this isn't the case. Still, "their house" could be argued also to simply mean "the house they live in", so I don't think the error is a grammatical one necessarily, but rather one of perceived clarity, and I say "perceived clarity", because I think the sentence, as it stands, is defensible. After all, we are happy to say, "I am going to Roy's house." without understanding that to be an assertion that Roy necessarily owns it in the financial sense, but only that Roy lives there.
The error is in the third spot.
"Owning your house some day" would imply that people wanted to own the house in their possession someday.
The correct sentence would be:
Most people in the country would like to own a house some day.
Another thing I noticed was that the sentence separates the words some and day, instead of the correct someday. Try searching some day on Google; it will ask if you meant someday.
The more correct sentence would be:
Most people in the country would like to own a house someday.
I think Part 3 is problematic and here's my reasons:
Most people ... their own houses
Or
Most people ...the houses of their own.
However, this is probably not the point of this question since this is generally ignored in everyday language unless this is acually the point of the grammar lesson.
I'm quoting this from Longman Common Mistakes in English,
Don't say: Many people lost their life at sea.
Say: Many people lost their lives at sea.
Lives refers to more than one person.
By the same analogy, why not houses and why house?!
Besides, you can find this example in LDOCE,
Many more people now own their own homes.
Although home is both count and noncount, house is just a count noun at least in the sense that we need to use it in the OP's sentence which includes their. I think this sentence is grammatically wrong.
Most people in the country would like to own their own house.
As I mentioned their refers to people's houses, and their makes us use houses and not house. So I think the right sentence would be
Most people in the country would like to own their own houses.
at some time in the future:
Some day we'll go back and see all our old friends.
I think choosing someday rather than some day is subject to a writer's preference then.
I think the only error, if you can call it that, lies in the lexical ambiguity associated with the word country, the term 'country' referring either to country (as opposed to 'town'), or country as in a state or nation. (Do people who live in towns also hope to own their own house some day?)
There's also an ambiguity; it isn't clear whether "in the country" means "in the country that we have been discussing" or "outside cities". That bothers me more than the other concerns folks have raised.
