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Anonymous Posted 12 years ago
Grammar
grammar
Hi everyone! I just want to ask you one question that really bothers me. I couldn't find anything about it in the internet or any grammar books...
The grammar says that we cannot use "both" with negative sentences and we have to use neither instead... but.. for example... if you want to say that one person is doing something, and the other is not doing the same, can we say "NOT BOTH OF THEM are doing something..." meaning that just one of them is doing it. I understand that we cannot say "both are not", etc.... but the sentence in my exapmle doesn't seem to be part of this grammar rule. So.. what do you say??
P.S. If we actually can use "both" as in my example, could you please send me a link to this rule????
The grammar says that we cannot use "both" with negative sentences and we have to use neither instead... but.. for example... if you want to say that one person is doing something, and the other is not doing the same, can we say "NOT BOTH OF THEM are doing something..." meaning that just one of them is doing it. I understand that we cannot say "both are not", etc.... but the sentence in my exapmle doesn't seem to be part of this grammar rule. So.. what do you say??
P.S. If we actually can use "both" as in my example, could you please send me a link to this rule????
Top answer
If one person was doing something and the other wasn't, that's what we would say. If somebody said that both people were doing something, and we wished to say that that was not the case, we'd probably say "One of them isn't doing it" or "Only one of them is doing it. We could just about say "Both of them aren't doing it/ Both of them aren't doing it", but it's not very likely.
- If one person was doing something and the other wasn't, that's what we would say.
- If somebody said that both people were doing something, and we wished to say that that was not the case, we'd probably say "One of them isn't doing it" or "Only one of them is doing it.
- We could just about say "Both of them aren't doing it/ Both of them aren't doing it", but it's not very likely.
- We do not say "Not both of them are doing it", but we could just say "Not both of them".
- )
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1 Answers
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If one person was doing something and the other wasn't, that's what we would say.
If somebody said that both people were doing something, and we wished to say that that was not the case, we'd probably say "One of them isn't doing it" or "Only one of them is doing it.
We could just about say "Both of them aren't doing it/Both of them aren't doing it", but it's not ve
If somebody said that both people were doing something, and we wished to say that that was not the case, we'd probably say "One of them isn't doing it" or "Only one of them is doing it.
We could just about say "Both of them aren't doing it/Both of them aren't doing it", but it's not ve
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