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Whole groups of people were not infected by the disease.Which does the sentence above mean?1: Not all the people were infected (i.e partial negation)2: No one was infected (i.e. complete negation)3: Ambiguous.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

1: Not all the people were infected (i.e partial negation)

Other groups were infected.

GPY · Answer

I interpreted this question slightly differently.

1. Whole groups of people were not infected by the disease. Only some people within each group were infected.
2. Whole groups of people were not infected by the disease. All the people within these groups seemed to be immune.

Therefore I would say it is ambiguous, though the second meaning is the first that I thought of.

I am not certain that I have interpreted the question as intended.

Anonymous · Answer

I interpret the statement as the following. Suppose there is a city through which a disease rages. Many people in the city are infected, however certain (whole) groups of people in the city are not affected, for example: no pregnant mothers have been infected; no one over the age of 70 has been infected; no one under the age of 3 has been infected.

So for the mutiple choices, of which the best answer is to be selected, I would pick 2. 1. does not apply because within each of the unaffected groups, no one was infected, while the phrase "not all" implies a portion of each group was infected. 3. is not a good choice because the statement is quite clear: whole groups within the general population were uninfected.

Mister Micawber · Answer

I agree that the words are ambiguous, GPY. I made my choice based on what course I believed a disease would take.

Taka · Answer

OK. So grammatically it can be taken either way, but semantically, it's clear what it means. I see.

Thanks!

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