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Interpreting “Some” in a Sentence

Ilnyy123Ilnyy123 Member
edited March 2021 in Logical Reasoning 40 karma

In the Core Curriculum we learned that “some” implies the possibility of “all.” But in a sentence like, “some of the lumber is cut to exact dimensions, some of it is not,” we have to exclude the possibility of some meaning “all,” is that right? Thanks!

Admin Note: https://7sage.com/lesson/some-statements-meaning/

Comments

  • WoodsCommaElleWoodsCommaElle Live Member
    398 karma

    Hey Ilnyy123 - you've got it the other way around :)

    It's actually All implies Some implies Most. Or All --> Some --> Most.

    If you think of a number line from 0 to 100, "All" is the point at 100. "Some," however, is a range from 1 to and including 100. It's not necessarily true that All will always imply Some. That is to say, All doesn't automatically imply Some, since Some is a range.

    As an example: Imagine a group of 5 people. If your boss had asked you to write down the names of all the people in the group, and you only gave them 3, then that wouldn't be right. When your boss says "all" here, they mean all 5 of the people in the group. No ifs and buts or room for debate.

    If they had instead asked you to write some of the names down, you could very well write down all 5 names (all the names) or only 3 names (some of the names), or even 1 name some name).

    So to answer your question: "Some of the lumber is cut to exact dimensions, some of it is not."

    The portions of lumber that are cut to exact dimensions cannot be all of the portions of lumber, since we also know that there's another portion of lumber that are not cut in this way. Thus, when we talk about the 2 groups of lumber (the parts that are cut to exact dimensions, and the parts that are not), we can't replace the "some" with "all" and make the statement: "All of the lumber is cut to exact dimensions, all of it is not." It just wouldn't make sense, and if the LSAT writers did this to me, I would be extremely... displeased.

    Already, you can see that, in order to make this sentence work, it MUST be that All implies Some, not the other way around.

    Hope this helps! Happy to clarify further :)

  • Ilnyy123Ilnyy123 Member
    40 karma

    Hey WoodsCommaElle, thanks for your reply! It really clarified my understanding, and now I'm 100% sure of how to deal with "some" and "all!" :smile: You really wrote in a way that made everything easy to understanding, thanks so much again! :smile:

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