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...that it does not already own...
Trådens avsändare: Luis DeGalocha
Luis DeGalocha
Luis DeGalocha  Identity Verified
Spanien
Local time: 01:02
Medlem (2008)
Engelska till Portugisiska
+ ...
Sep 10, 2003

I have come across the following "structure" a couple of times but it still does not sound quite right, somehow!

“France Telecom offered €7 billion for the 13.6% that it does not already own of Orange” – The Economist, September 6th 2003

Is this a grammatical sentence? Or some kind of economic jargon?

Any comments would be appreciated.

Regards,

Luis
 
Giles Watson
Giles Watson  Identity Verified
Italien
Local time: 01:02
Italienska till Engelska
In memoriam
It looks like a question of emphasis Sep 10, 2003

[quote]Luís DeGalocha wrote:

I have come across the following "structure" a couple of times but it still does not sound quite right, somehow!

“France Telecom offered €7 billion for the 13.6% that it does not already own of Orange” – The Economist, September 6th 2003

Is this a grammatical sentence?

Hi Luís,

It's a very inelegant construction so we have to assume that the writer was trying to make a point.

Normally, the partitive "of Orange" would precede the relative clause in the noun phrase and "already" would come between the auxiliary and the main verb so the standard word order would be:

the 13.6% of Orange that it does not already own.

However, the writer apparently wants to emphasise the fact that France Telecom owns nearly all of Orange and is making a bid for the remainder, hence the change in word order.

The version selected would be acceptable enough in informal conversation, where the speaker could signal the emphasis by modulating voice pitch and stress, but in written English, the same effect would have been better achieved by end-focusing "already":

the 13.6% of Orange that it does not own already.

HTH

Giles
 
Narasimhan Raghavan
Narasimhan Raghavan  Identity Verified
Local time: 04:32
Engelska till Tamil
+ ...
In memoriam
I am reminded of one incident Sep 10, 2003

A few years back I used to do French broadcasting live in the All India Radio for the External Services. The news in English will be given to us for translating into French and then reading live at the time of broadcasting at 0120 hrs Indian Standard Time. Once the first headline mentioned that India and Russia have agreed to form a democratically elected government in Afghanistan. I was dumb-founded and asked the editor as to how it was politically possible. It was his turn to become pale. The ... See more
A few years back I used to do French broadcasting live in the All India Radio for the External Services. The news in English will be given to us for translating into French and then reading live at the time of broadcasting at 0120 hrs Indian Standard Time. Once the first headline mentioned that India and Russia have agreed to form a democratically elected government in Afghanistan. I was dumb-founded and asked the editor as to how it was politically possible. It was his turn to become pale. The poor man meant to say that India and Russia would support the formation of a democratically elected government in Afghanistan. His anguish was all the more pronounced as the headline had already been aired in the 9 P.M. news at prime time. He felt so miserable but I assured him that at least in French I would modify the content suitably.

[Edited at 2003-09-20 16:38] ▲ Collapse
 
Marcus Malabad
Marcus Malabad  Identity Verified
Kanada
Tyska till Engelska
+ ...
posting a forum message versus KudoZ Oct 8, 2003

Hi Luis,

Your post might be more useful as a KudoZ question in English monolingual. You'll get more and better answers there as well.

Please feel free to post on this forum any topic on linguistics where a discussion is generally the better suited recourse.

Just a friendly reminder from the moderator,
Marcus
 


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...that it does not already own...






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