Saturday, September 27, 2014

syntactic analysis - How to emphasize that a problem is represented even in smaller group?



I am trying to emphasize the significance and prevalence of some problem by showing that even in a small group of people this problem is represented very well.




Just for example, let's say that we are discussing crime problem and I know that there are many people who were robbed in my school. At the same time, I know that there are 3 people in my class who were robbed in the last month, which is a lot.
I want to express the following idea:




look, even in our class there are 3 robbed people, imagine how many people are robbed in the school overall




So, I come up with something like this:




Only among our class 3 people were robbed in the last month!





or




3 people were robbed in the last month, only among our class!




(I am not sure if it should be "only" or "just")




However, one guy has said that this sentence would confuse him, because it sounds like a statement of fact that all robbed people were only from our class, or that our class is the only class where exactly (or at least) 3 people were robbed.



Is it true? Or is it just a matter of where you place an accent in this sentence
when you say it?



If it helps, then it would sound like this in my mother language (Russian):




Только среди учеников нашего класса 3 человека были ограблены в этом месяце!
Только в нашем классе 3 человека были ограблены в этом месяце!




Answer



You need the phrase "In our class alone". As in:




In our class alone, three people were robbed in the last month!




This gets rid of the ambiguity as to whether the people who were robbed came only from your class. In the above sentence, it is explicit that we are talking exclusively about one class, not the whole school. I'd recommend you follow it up with a statement about what this implies about the crime rate of the whole school.


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