Teacher (Insert Your Name)
The Fuji write-up is done but choosing pics is too difficult right now; it's making me sad having to sacrifice some over others.
Instead, here is an interesting question a student posed to me. I came up with a decent answer (I think). I'll post my answer after a few of you give your opinions:
If you read the line 'Akira is an eager old stamp collector', what noun does the word 'old' belong to? The subject or object? How could you change it so that 'old' refers solely to 'old stamps'...?
4 comments:
Ok, I'll start the ball rolling on this. I believe that when written this way 'old' refers to the stamps more then the person themselves. Obviously much would depend on the spoken emphasis and any visual reference.
x
You could say: Akira is an eager collector of old stamps.
Otherwise it's just one of those sentences in English that when written, can be misleading, but useful in comedy.
Though it's safe to say that if you collect stamps they are mostly old ones. It would be weird if you collected only stamps currently in circulation, and so when they were redesigned you had to chuck out your old ones and start again. - Martyn
Fantastic - two entries and they basically say what i told the student:
It depends a lot on intonation, but if you say "collector of old stamps" it makes it a definite possessive to the subject.
There are many ways to express this and to state the definitive.
To answer martyn, "older stamps"
one collects First Day Stamps, so at issue date they are hardly old but still collectible.
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