grammar - The condition for saying “You’re the door on the right.” etc. and its construction


This question is a spin-off from “Is you’re the door on the right. grammatically correct?” . After the original question, some ideas came to me, about its conditions and construction. I opened this question to see if my ideas are worth considering and to organize them.



"There." They had reached the second landing. "You're the door on the right. I'll call you when it's over!" And she hurried off downstairs again. (Harry Potter 5 [US Version]: p.62) [Bold font is mine]



N.B.: The speaker is Mrs. Weasely, who led Harry to his room.


Questions:


1. Just from the sentence You’re the door on the right., would you have an impression there’re other people than you?


(I believe that the form of the sentence implies the existence of a group of people.)


2. In new situations (This time, the subject is I )


1) There’s no assignment.


The rooms are available on a first-come-first-served basis. Mrs. Weasley brings Harry upstairs just to let him know where the rooms are and to tell him he can choose whichever he likes. In this case, can Harry say like this? :“Oh, I see. Thanks. I’m the door on the right (meaning ‘I’ll use the room on the right side’)”


2) There’s an assignment.


The guests including Harry knew the layout of the rooms and already decided the assignment of the rooms by themselves. Mrs. Weasley, who doesn’t know which room is assigned to whom, brings Harry upstairs just to let him know where the rooms are. In this case, can Harry say like this? : “Oh, I see. Thanks. I’m the door on the right (meaning ‘my room is at the door on the right.’)”


(I believe that some assignment in advance is one of the most important conditions of this form, whether the subject is I or you. Therefore if such assignment doesn’t exist, the acceptability of this form, I think, is lower or zero. I would think 1) is less acceptable than 2).)


3. Can Mrs. Weasley in the top citation say “You’re the room on the right.” instead of “You’re the door on the right.”?


(I believe that the subject of this form includes the thing which assigned to him or her. I wouldn’t think she can say you’re the room on the right. because the subject you already has room in it.)


I know these questions are not enough to understand the form completely, but I hope I can get some clues about its conditions and construction. Thank you.



Answer





  1. There is at least a weak implication that there are or will be other people who will be associated with other doors.




  2. The form definitely implies that Harry’s room has already been assigned to him; it doesn’t require anyone else’s room already to have been assigned.




  3. Yes.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

Years and years ago, I remember reading in a book on AmE usage that the phrasal turn a baby creeps before it walks was to some extent more common to AmE than to BrE, which preferred exclusively the "crawl" version. And so, I just recently checked on the accuracy of that information on NGram Viewer , and it actually was fact... more than a century ago! What I would like you to tell is if it would sound sort of weird to hear someone say today in the US that a child "creeps" before walking and running (see Synonyms ) rather than it crawls. Also, what's the story to those terms? How did "to crawl" come to prevail and supersede "to creep" to describe the way a baby moves around? As with a plant, so with a child. His mind grows by natural stages. A child creeps before he walks , sits before he stands, cries before he laughs, babbles before he talks, draws a circle before he draws a square, lies before he tells the truth, and is selfish before he
Read more

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

Does this sentence have too many subjunctives? If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries. I am stumped by this sentence construction. First, there is "Let it be," which is a common English idiomatic phrase, but then it follows another subjunctive. Is that to say you can actually have a subjunctive followed by another subjunctive? Also, why does the sentence use "please"? If that's the subjunctive tense there, then why is it followed by another subjunctive instead of a conditional, or maybe "Let it be" is the conditional? Lastly, I wish to know how the that is used in the sentence. Perhaps, the simplified sentence can be restated like so: Let it be decreed that they be destroyed and that they may put it into the king's treasuries. If not, maybe the simplified sent
Read more

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

I've been reading William Manchester's book "American Caesar", which is about Douglas MacArthur, and I found that he uses a strange convention for pluralizing the family name. When talking about the MacArthurs as a whole, he writes MacArthur' with an apostrophe, as in "After the war, the MacArthur' lived in Tokyo while the general was proconsul" (yes, he uses that term to describe him). I have never seen or heard of a rule that would prescribe this. Manchester is a bit old-timey in his style: for example, he also writes "in behalf of" instead of "on behalf of", which is the only one I have ever seen. So perhaps this is similar. Where does he get this apostrophe from? Edit: There seems to be some difficulty finding examples, which is odd. Here is a direct link to a page from Google Books that shows the apostrophe.
Read more

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

This is a phrase I’m particularly confused about, because it’s used often when something is manipulated or changed. For example, sometimes images surface online that are clearly Photoshopped, but people refer to them as “doctored” images. Why use the word “doctored” here? Answer The earliest Google Books match for an instance of doctored in a transitional (or perhaps post-transitional) sense between "amended" and "adulterated" appears in William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire; Including Its Dairy: Together with the Dairy Management of North Wiltshire, and the Management of Orchards and Fruit Liquor, in Herefordshire , volume 2 (1789): Men in general, however, whose palates are set to rough cider, consider the common sweet sort as an effeminate beverage; and rough cider, properly manufactured, is probably the most generous liquor; being deemed more wholesome, to habits in general, than sweet cider:—even when genuine. That which is drank, in the kingd
Read more

phrases - Somebody is gonna kiss the donkey

I heard this phrase when I was watching Battleship. An old man said, "Somebody is gonna kiss the donkey." I do not know what it means, I only heard it in a movie. What is this phrase mean? In Addition: I think it was Rihanna who said "Saddle Ridge will be in weapons range in five minutes," then the old man stated the phrase. Answer It is a confused attempt at a play on (for example) "kiss my ass," or, some similar phrase. It is quite common in English today that idioms get mangled.
Read more

typography - When a dagger is used to indicate a note, must it come after an asterisk?

The typographical symbol dagger (†) has several meanings. Possibly its most common use is as a footnote marker. According to You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies ( Partridge , 1953), when it is used for this purpose, it must be used for second footnotes only; the first footnote should be indicated by an asterisk (*), the third a double dagger (‡) and further footnotes other symbols or numbers. Where does Patridge's rule fall on a scale of one to ten, where one is "this is just one guy's random opinion" and ten is "this is a widely accepted rule of English and any deviation from it is unarguably incorrect"? This question was inspired by this Meta Stack Overflow question about the use of daggers on Stack Exchange site FAQ pages . Answer The dagger (also known as an obelisk ) is properly used for the second footnote. The asterisk is for the first, and the double dagger is for the third. This is supported by several websites: And so
Read more

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
Read more