他们 who are they here?

[Pedroski]

郭高林 and some 同学们 have started a green grocer's. I would like to know who the red 他们 are.

 

Either 他们 is '郭高林 and his 同学们', or are 他们 ‘很多人都’？I put the sentence before and after in to give more context.

If it was something like  '把他们证明‘ I would understand it better. Or if there was no 他们:  郭高林决心用实际行动证明自己。Or if it was 郭高林和他的同学们决心。。。

 

 

创业不是“三分钟热度”

 

听说大学生卖菜，起初很多人都认为他们的创业是“三分钟热度”。郭高林他们决心用实际行动证明自己。却使是寒冷的冬天，他们也要一大早就爬出被窝，顶着寒风，蹬三轮车到蔬菜

批发市场进菜。

 

I just listened to it again. I think I've got it now. Shouldn't it be:

 

郭高林让他们决心用实际行动证明自己。

Edited February 22, 2015 at 03:15 AM by Pedroski

[yifeng]

郭高林他们 = 郭高林和他的同学们

 

In the clause "却使是寒冷的冬天",  “却使” should be "即使" which means "even"

[imron]

Either 他们 is '郭高林 and his 同学们'

This one.

 

or are 他们 ‘很多人都’？

How would this possibly make sense given the context - e.g. how would those '很多人' be 用实际行动证明自己.  Logically, the people proving themselves through their actions are the students.

 

if it was 郭高林和他的同学们决心。。。

郭高林他们 is a much more concise way of expressing the exact same thing.

[陳德聰]

I think if you can't figure out where the coreferents are, you potentially didn't catch that literally all of the 他们 are not referring to the 很多人.

 

听说 [大学生]_i 卖菜，起初 [很多人]_j 都认为 [他们]_i 的创业是“三分钟热度”。[郭高林他们]_k 决心用实际行动证明 [自己]_k 。即使是寒冷的冬天，[他们]_k 也要一大早就爬出被窝，顶着寒风，蹬三轮车到蔬菜批发市场进菜。

[Pedroski]

Of course the people proving themselves are the students. Just the apposition of 郭高林 and 他们 is a bit odd. Who then does 决心？

 

Also, yes, it should be 即使

[Lu]

某某他们 is a set construction meaning 'So-and-so and a few other people he is with'. As Imron says, it's a more concise way of saying this. Useful when you don't want to enumerate all the people.

Nice example from real life, I might have told it before:

I was out with a female friend and a mutual male friend of ours, in Taiwan. The female friend's parents called: where are you? 在外面, she said, 跟[Lu]他们。 In this case 他们 was used to not tell her parents who exactly she was hanging out with, but they knew me so at least they had some point of reference. (Not that anything untowards was going on, but she just didn't feel like explaining.)

[陳德聰]

Just the apposition of 郭高林 and 他们 is a bit odd. Who then does 决心？

[郭高林他们] "does" 决心, as in "they 决心".

 

郭高林他们 is just a marginally more specific 他们, where you pull one member of the array that forms "他们" out to identify which "他们" you are talking about.

 

你跟Lu他们在一起还是跟阿聪他们在一起？

In this case, for some reason Lu and 阿聪 are supposed to not coexist in the same array of friends. I'm not sure why, though. I quite like Lu.

[Lu]

I'm not sure why, though.

I suspect the Atlantic Ocean might be part of the reason.

[Pedroski]

One more question: would it have been possible to write 郭高林的他们？

 

As in this example sentence is from dj.iciba.com

 

内心痛苦、突感寂寞的她去寻找琼－保罗。I don't think we can use an adjective to describe a personal pronoun this way in English.

[yifeng]

In Chinese, adjectives can be used to describe pronoun. For example, in this story we can say 年轻的他们, 勤奋的他们, etc.

 

If you use person name to describe pronoun, it has other meaning.. 郭高林的他们 means that 他们 belong to 郭高林. In fact, 郭高林 is one of them. So it is wrong.

[Lu]

突感寂寞的她 She, who was suddenly lonely.

But you're right, it doesn't really work in English. Not in Dutch either. Might work just fine in Latin though, I'm not sure. 'The suddenly lonely Mary' on the other hand works okay.