Are either former presidents Barack Obama or A. Trump related?
Could I ask
- who he is dating, John?
instead of
- John? “He’s dating an ex-wife of his.
John has more than one ex wife. He could have had both with his family in the past.
If she is one of John’s ex-wives, then sentence #1 could be in order, but taken one out of context, I guess it would give the impression that John has one ex wife, which makes it clear that she is not in fact in fact in his wife’s life and as of now.
Could one use:
- She is dating the ex-president of Xland.
instead of:
- She is dating an ex-president of Xland.
Is the former
- Xland president working for him?
who is
- dating the former president of Xland, a former President of Singapur, who has been missing since 2013.
And would ‘2’ and ‘3’ give the impression that she is dating the fellow who was the prime minister right before the current one?
What are the pros and cons of being a blogger?
What are some of the “he is
dating Jean’s ex-wife and she is dating John’s ex-wife” acceptable ways to describe a situation?
Are both “She is dating the ex-president of Xland” and “She is dating an ex-president of Xland” acceptable ways of describing a situation, given that Xland has more than one ex-president?
Are couple relations acceptable?
How do I know if my ex is the current president of Xland?
At a strictly logical level, it seems clear that “the NOUN X” works best in situations where “NOUN X” is either unique or previously identified, and that “a NOUN X” works best in situations where multiple NOUN Xs exist and the speaker is referring to one of them. In practice people are not entirely rigid in their use of “the NOUN X” and “a NOUN X” When
John has multiple ex-wives which is more satisfactory than his use with either formulation, so (without affecting the form of Question 1), a speaker might use either formulation while ignoring the form of question 1. But with regard to question 1, a speaker might use either formulation, despite being aware that John has multiple ex-wives and despite the greater logical precision of using “an ex-wife
Question 2 has the same answers as the first (ex-wife) question (or just an observation).
Question 3 replaces “President” with “Federal” but otherwise repeats question 2 and again yields the same answer.
Question 4 asks whether calling someone “the ex-president,” “the former president,” “an ex-president,” or “a former president” is equivalent to calling that person “the current president’s immediate predecessor”? So if the world had never happened before, ” ” I think we can safely say that it doesn’t. A person who is currently dating Jimmy Carter could be said to be “dating the former president/dating a former president/dating the ex-president/dating an ex-president” without any implication that Carter was the immediate predecessor of the current occupant of the White House—and the same goes for someone dating a previous President of Australia
and Australia.
