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  • `Several' misapplied?

    From Anton Shepelev@2:221/6 to All on Mon Mar 29 01:18:14 2021
    Hello, all

    The chief of a computer-science laboratory where my friend works
    condemned his usage of the word `several' in the the following
    sentence:

    We present several new piecewise-polynomial kernels for image
    interpolation.

    on the ground that it is a typical mistake made by those who
    learned English in a Russian school. Perhaps I was not sufficiently
    diligent in the English classes of my Russian school, but I see no
    fault in that sentence, except maybe for a missing introductory
    phrase, such as "In this article, we present..." Do you?

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    * Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)
  • From Anton Shepelev@2:221/6 to mark lewis on Sat Apr 3 14:42:20 2021
    )\/(ark Lewis:

    there's nothing wrong with that sentence... "several"
    specifically means "three or more but not too many more"
    ;)

    the prepending of "In this article" doesn't really add
    anything to the sentence...

    why did the chief of a computer-science laboratory think
    there was a problem with it?

    My friend's account of it was so vague and incomplete that I
    daredn't try retell it here. It included, for example, a
    contrast with "a function of several arguments", which the
    chief considered correct and which is in fact an interesting
    example of `several' used in technical language with a mean-
    ing that is wider than the general one: any naturual number
    greater than unity.

    As to my friend's article, he has decided to replace `sever-
    al' with `a number of' because he likes it better.

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    * Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)