great white movements, measure the animals' daily movements

I rarely get involved in matters of language so Ill pass on that part.

The sharks dive deeply and come up closer to the surface at different times of the day. Tracking them and presenting the data visually is often a better way to get the human mind to envision their diurnal patterns, rather than just looking at tables of numbers.3-D is just another trick thats used
I always like to have data graphed so I can , with the creative side of my head, discern trends more quickly than with purely math constructs.

We have maps and airphotos converted into 3-D for client presentations. I got a picture of a bunch of us and some clients in our conference room , everybody had those stupid 3_d glasses that they used in theaters. I went out and bought a bunch of cooler looking 3-d glasses with our logo on, so we just hand em out. It beats those dum pens that Amsterdam pushes

"Great white movements" could also be phrased, "The movements of the great white sharks". Is it more clear that way?

Yeah, that's very clear.

But still I wanna know why he use singular noun here since I'm studing the language.

Could you please explain why?

No answer? Anyone?

Translat, this is tricky. Sometimes, a combination of words is so unique within a topical framework that some of the words may get dropped for brevity--without a loss of clarity. In a conversation about professional baseball, for example, the "big leagues" (the highest level of professional play) is sometimes referred to as the "bigs". Outside of that topic or amongst those who don't know baseball well, it would not likely be understood. Like "great white", the noun has been dropped ("leagues") leaving an adjective that is treated as if it were a noun.

In the case of "great white", most people would immediately understand that "shark" was implied and typically, would use the singular or plural the same as if it were "great white shark". Hence, two "great white sharks" would be two "great whites". In our example, "The tags track great white movements," would similarly be "The tags track great white shark movements." The construction appears singular, but "great white shark" is really used as an adjective to describe the movement of an unspecified number of sharks. Hyphenating compound adjectives (great-white-shark movements) would make clear the adjectival nature of the phrase, but we have gotten quite lazy about this rule.

If the writer were referring to, let's say, two specific sharks he would use the definite article and the possessive plural form: The tags track the great whites' movements."

I guess from what you said above, Valpower, that "great white"(adjective) stands for "great white shark" (noun), (I can understand this), and "great white shark)"(noun) act as an adjective component in the sentense to modify the Object movements(noun). So the process is as below:

adjective-noun-adjective,

right?

And what I can't be sure about is if you mean since "great white shark" is modifying "movements", so it acts as an adjective, and so(since it's adjective) it is singular?



And the second question is simple:
In your example: "The tags track the great whites' movements."
What does this sentense mean exactly?

There are two kinds of sharks, "the great whites' " means one of them or both of them?

adjective (great) - adjective (white) - noun (shark)

Essentially, yes. It is constructed as singular (as a convention only) but since it is not a noun, it is not truly singular (in other words, it has no number).

None of your questions is ever simple, Translat. The sentence means that the tags allow the scientists to record their movement. The methods, however can vary from a simple tag that identifies the shark to one that provides electronic feedback on its location.

I'm not sure what you mean. There are many varieties of shark, but only one variety is a great white shark.

And the second question is simple:
In your example: "The tags track the great whites' movements."
What does this sentense mean exactly?
There are two kinds of sharks, "the great whites' " means one of them or both of them?


By asking that, I'm not simply not sure about the whole sentense, I'm wondering why you use "the great whites" here, which is plural and is preceded with a "the". So I'm not sure whether this means one group of sharks
or
one of two or more groups of different kinds of sharks.

Thank you for taking trouble to answer me.