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Park sang joon Posted 10 years ago
Grammar
The analyses of a sentence #2
The narrator recalls his childhood; he came home from the boarding school for his mother's sudden death.
Now all the funeral finished and several days have passed.
His stepfather Mr. Murdstone never cares about him and his favorite Peggotty, the only maid in his house, is being fired after several days.
Peggotty tells him that she is giving another visit at her brother's and ask him to go with her there.
If anything, short of being in a different relation to everyone about me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me, of renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadow ships breaking through the mist, of roaming up and down with little Em'ly, telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells and pebbles on the beach, made a calm in m heart.
[David Copperfield by Charles Dickens]
I'd like to know if the underlined phrase means the following:
"because if Peggotty excepted, I was in a different relation to everyone about me"
And I'd like to know what "a different relation" means here.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Now all the funeral finished and several days have passed.
His stepfather Mr. Murdstone never cares about him and his favorite Peggotty, the only maid in his house, is being fired after several days.
Peggotty tells him that she is giving another visit at her brother's and ask him to go with her there.
If anything, short of being in a different relation to everyone about me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me, of renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadow ships breaking through the mist, of roaming up and down with little Em'ly, telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells and pebbles on the beach, made a calm in m heart.
[David Copperfield by Charles Dickens]
I'd like to know if the underlined phrase means the following:
"because if Peggotty excepted, I was in a different relation to everyone about me"
And I'd like to know what "a different relation" means here.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Top answer
The basic structure is "If anything, short of X, could Y, it was Z". This mean that Z was the only thing (or one of the few things), other than improbable X, that could achieve difficult thing Y. "being in a different relation to everyone around me, Pegotty excepted" means "having a different relationship to everyone around me, other than Pegotty".
- The basic structure is "If anything, short of X, could Y, it was Z".
- This mean that Z was the only thing (or one of the few things), other than improbable X, that could achieve difficult thing Y.
- "being in a different relation to everyone around me, Pegotty excepted" means "having a different relationship to everyone around me, other than Pegotty".
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1 Answers
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The basic structure is "If anything, short of X, could Y, it was Z". This mean that Z was the only thing (or one of the few things), other than improbable X, that could achieve difficult thing Y.
"being in a different relation to everyone around me, Pegotty excepted" means "having a different relationship to everyone around me, other than Pegotty".
"being in a different relation to everyone around me, Pegotty excepted" means "having a different relationship to everyone around me, other than Pegotty".
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