Does the sentence below have mutiple meanings?
Do “Someone left a message for Vicky” mean "Someone left a message which was intended to be sent to and used by Vicky" or "Someone left a message instead of Vicky"?
By the way, what's the difference between "Someone left a message for Vicky" and "Someone left the message for Vicky".
Thanks in advance.
Top answer
Yunqing Zhang Do es “Someone left a message for Vicky” mean "Someone left a message which was intended to be sent to and used by Vicky" or "Someone left a message instead of Vicky"? 999% of cases, but I wouldn't rule out the latter entirely. There may be a scenario in which the second one works.
- Yunqing Zhang Do es “Someone left a message for Vicky” mean "Someone left a message which was intended to be sent to and used by Vicky" or "Someone left a message instead of Vicky"?
- 999% of cases, but I wouldn't rule out the latter entirely.
- There may be a scenario in which the second one works.
- Yunqing Zhang By the way, what's the difference between "Someone left a message for Vicky" and "Someone left the message for Vicky".
- It's the same difference you'd expect for any minimal pair that differs only by "a" vs "the".
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Yunqing ZhangDoes“Someone left a message for Vicky” mean "Someone left a message which was intended to be sent to and used by Vicky" or "Someone left a message instead of Vicky"?
It's the former in 99.999% of cases, but I wouldn't rule out the latter entirely. There may be a scenario in which the second one works.
0Does“Someone left a message for Vicky” mean "Someone left a message which was intended to be sent to and used by Vicky" or "Someone left a message instead of Vicky"? Both meanings are possible, but the context will normally nk the intention clear. #1 is much more common For #2, we'd almost always say it another way,
eg Vicky got someone to leave a message..
0
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