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Wed 21 Oct, 2015 11:17 am
-__ physical contact among them will alter things again.
My opinion: Using one in the blank is wrong, and no word should be used. If you are talking one, two, three, etc. contacts, you are talking about people or an occasion on which you meet or communicate with somebody eg They had bad contacts with the community. But the sentence above is nothing of this kind, so using one is wrong. Do you agree?
The only opinion i have to offer is that it's an idiotic sentence. "Physical contact?" What, fist fights? I will once again offer the opinion that the author of the texts you are using is not a native-speaker of English.
@WBYeats,
"Any" would work.
I'd change "will" to "would," however.
Thank you Setanta, and InfraBlue. But for Blue, if you think 'one' is wrong in the sentence, and 'one' cannot be used to describe 'physical contact' in that case, then what is the idiomatic English to refer to 'one act of physical contact'?(=the slightest contact, etc.)
Physical contact is a very general category. You'd have to be specific to use the word "one," e.g. "One kiss, one touch, one noogie, etc."
@InfraBlue,
Excellent answer. Thank you.
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