i had my boyfriend stolen twice. Does it make sense? Does this mean 2 boyfriends stolen?
2006-09-21 04:28:05 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Education & Reference ➔ Other - Education
Two boyfriends have been stolen.
My boyfriend has been stolen twice.
See the difference? Two is plural---so they HAVE
One is singular, so he HAS
2006-09-21 04:30:19 · answer #1 · answered by catherine02116 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Good example!
Normally, "twice" affects the action of the sentence -- I have been to London twice, I fed my cat twice, etc.
However, because the action here is "stolen," it makes the meaning less clear. Is it the same boyfriend stolen on two separate occasions? Or is it two separate boyfriends?
There are several ways to make this clearer. If you mean two separate boyfriends, the simplest is to make "boyfriends" plural:
I had my boyfriends stolen twice.
That makes it clear that you are referring to more than one boyfriend. You could also say "I had two boyfriends stolen," which conveys the same meaning without the question about what "twice" refers to.
If you mean the same boyfriend and separate events, try:
I had the same boyfriend stolen twice.
Which makes the boyfriend in question sound fickle, to say the least.
This issue is called "syntactic ambiguity" -- syntactic because it is caused by the word order in the sentence, and ambiguity because that order does not make a single meaning clear. My favorite example of syntactic ambiguity from my own school days:
If the cat won't eat its food, put it through the meat grinder again.
To what does "put it" refer -- the food, or the cat? :-)
The Sources link will take you to the Amazon.com listing for my favorite reference work on written English, "The Elements of Style," by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. At 105 pages, it's brisk, brief and entertaining. It's the classic work for anyone who wants to communicate in written English; I think it would be very useful for advanced students of English as a foreign language as well as native speakers.
2006-09-21 11:52:28 · answer #2 · answered by Scott F 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It could mean one boyfriend or two, but if you really meant two different ones, the better way to word it would be "I had a boyfriend stolen twice." It's all syntax.
2006-09-21 11:29:45 · answer #3 · answered by teacherhelper 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
it seems like your sayin u had the same bf stolen twice. if u want to say it was 2 boy friends say i had 2 bf stolen
2006-09-21 11:30:12 · answer #4 · answered by keldog 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋