this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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[–] Mr_Blott@feddit.uk 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah as an example a simple sentence like "My daughter and her boyfriend went to a concert but she got ill so they had to come home"

Can't change to "My daughter and her boyfriend went to a concert but they got ill so they had to come home"

It loses its meaning.

My daughter and her boyfriend went to a concert but my daughter got ill so they had to come home" is extra "work"

It's not perfect

[–] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

But you literally just demonstrated how dealing with ambiguous pronouns is a non-issue? You'd get the exact same ambiguity with "a mother and daughter went to a concert but [she] got ill".

[–] Mr_Blott@feddit.uk 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

But you would never say that, unless you actually wanted to confuse people!

In your example, you'd have to say the mother or the daughter, but not in my example

How does your example read if you change 'she' for 'they'?

[–] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago

I think you've missed the point. You don't say it that way because it's ambiguous and it's natural to avoid the ambiguity. The same applies to your example; you're speaking in an intentionally awkward way and you already know how you'd say it normally.