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>Sorry, "its" what? Copy editors, please. Imagine the sentence "Alice tinkers with her health care system. Bob revamped his." It's the same concept, but with "
by xtony 9y ago
>Sorry, "its" what? Copy editors, please.
Imagine the sentence "Alice tinkers with her health care system. Bob revamped his." It's the same concept, but with "its" as the pronoun.
- mc32 9y agoSure, but I expect the NYT to use native Eng speakers who understand that "its" does not work that way. It's just sloppy of them.
- temp 9y ago>that "its" does not work that way. Can you expand on what the mistake is?
- mc32 9y agoIt's missing the antecedent. So for this to make sense in Eng it should read: Taiwan, in contrast, revamped its [own|healthcare|something] top to bottom. Otherwise it looks like "Taiwan, in contrast, revamped its [top] [to [the] bottom]."
- temp 9y ago>It's missing the antecedent. So for this to make sense in Eng it should read: It's not missing the antecedent, it's near the end of the previous sentence, just like the other person you replied to said. Singapore, which we wrote about in October, tinkers with its health care system all the time. Taiwan, in contrast, revamped its top to bottom. The its clearly refers to health care system from the previous sentence.
- mc32 9y agoTrue enough. It's just not common usage to use "its" as an absolute possessive like that. Whereas other possessives lend themselves to that usage. In other words it's typically used as a possessive determiner in this construction. It's somewhat similar to the following: -Have you eaten? -Yes, I've.
- yellow_postit 9y agoAnd thus your first statement gets completely overshadowed by a minor, and to me meaningless, grammatical discussion.