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Wholegrain Posted 17 years ago
Grammar

Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

I have asked this before, but I didn't get a satisfacting response; moreover, I have asked this at several occasions and I had all sorts of answers, but no one told me why so I could understand. ANALYSIS and ANALYSES both have the same meaning as defined by this dictionary entry: "(countable, context, of a thing, concept, theory, etc.) The process of dismantling or separating into constituent elements in order to study the nature, function, or meaning; the result of this process." The word "analysis" is countable; therefore, ANALYSIS and ANALYSES must refer to different things.


Moreover, it may be difficult to separate the effects
of salt from other nutrients that may contribute to
stomach cancer risk. The absence of adjustment for
confounding factors (such as age, sex, smoking and
dietary habit) can hamper the statistical estimation
causing over- or underestimation of the real association
between salt or salted food and stomach cancer. In
Tables 1 and 2, few studies have controlled for dietary
factors in their ANALYSES of salt consumption, which
makes it difficult to compare the different studies
according to the dietary variables adjusted in the ANALYSIS.
However, the study results that were adjusted by a wide
range of potentially confounding variables, such as age,
sex, H pylori infection, atrophic gastritis, medical history
of peptic ulcer, family history of cancer, body mass
index, diabetes, total cholesterol, physical activity, alcohol
intake, smoking habit and other dietary factors[68],
showed no difference from the crude results. Studies
with adjustment for some or most of the above potential
confounding factors[66,68,72,73] showed no systematically
apparent differences from the studies with adjustment
for a few or several confounders.

  

Top answer

wholegrain The word "analysis" is countable; therefore, ANALYSIS and ANALYSES must refer to different things. I don't accept your conclusion. "Dog" is countable, and "dog" and "dogs" refer to the same thing.

  • wholegrain The word "analysis" is countable; therefore, ANALYSIS and ANALYSES must refer to different things.
  • I don't accept your conclusion.
  • "Dog" is countable, and "dog" and "dogs" refer to the same thing.
  • << In Tables 1 and 2, few studies have controlled for dietary factors in their ANALYSES of salt consumption >> It's fair to assume that the analyses differ in the several studies.
  • Are you opposed to the term being used both as the definition of a process and as describing one specific act (or a number of acts) in which the process is performed?
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26 Answers
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wholegrain The word "analysis" is countable; therefore, ANALYSIS and ANALYSES must refer to different things.
I don't accept your conclusion. "Dog" is countable, and "dog" and "dogs" refer to the same thing.
<< In Tables 1 and 2, few studies have controlled for dietary factors in their ANALYSES of salt consumption >>
It's fair to assume
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Dog and dogs refer to the same thing, but the former refers to one dog and the latter to more than one dog.

Well, I am not necessarily opposed to the idea; however, I don't know if analysis could have been substitued by analyses without affecting the overall meaning of the sentence, and if that's the case why it is grammatical.

By here, I meant "in this case, extract".

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My grandmother makes cookies. She makes them all according to the correct recipies. She makes each type according to the correct recipie. She makes them all according to the correct recipie.

I think this is the same issue we're talking about with "analysis/analyses." People sometimes use the singular in talking about multiple cases. To me, it's incorrect; but it's done all th
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No, I really think the plural should have been used. But thank you for you response. I guess there's nothing else to really say about it since I have asked this question a million time.
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err, it's not a pronoun
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Hi wholegrain

I'm new around these parts, but I think I have an answer to this.

"In Tables 1 and 2, few studies have controlled for dietary factors in their ANALYSES of salt consumption, which makes it difficult to compare the different studies according to the dietary variables adjusted in the ANALYSIS."

It would seem that the first clause of the sentence relates to th
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I thought about this, but then it must be an anaphora, and the author did not say he was doing a metaanalysis of the studies encompassed in table 1 and 2.
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I'm in way over my head in this thread. I have no comment on analysis/analyses, donkey pronouns, anaphora or metaanalysis. But I do know that it's "recipe" (oddly enough, considering how it's pronounced), not "recipie."
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Well, I think we can all agree that dietary variables refer to all the variables found in the analyses; THE ANALYSIS is certainly not a "donkey anaphora"--it is correlated with "each" "every" and other expressions of the type, it doesn't seem to be anything else but an error. Either my interpretation is completely off or it is an error.

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