Martin v. Löwis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> added the comment: > The following pair of sentences illustrate what I am trying to say. > Guido was once a Nederlander, but he moved to America. > Guido was once a student of Professor X, but he moved to America. > In English, the second 'he' is ambiguous because of the particular first > modifier.
Ah - thanks for the explanation. I now recall that native speakers typically associate "it" (or "he") with the *last* thing/person being mentioned. If this is the case, it's indeed different from German; the literal translation of the second sentence would not usually be considered ambiguous: Guido war früher Student von Professor X, (er) ist aber nach Amerika umgezogen. If we wanted to express that it is X who moved, we would say Guido war früher Student von Professor X, der/welcher aber nach Amerika umgezogen ist. which translates to Guido was once a student of Professor X, who moved to America, though. (couldn't figure out how to put the "but" into that sentence) So in German, it seems, backward references go typically to the subject of the main phrase. _______________________________________ Python tracker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://bugs.python.org/issue4243> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
