30 cows between them

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here is a text i am reading

Two farmers A and B have 30 cows between them . Though A sells his cows at a different rate than B , they both receive the same total sum . If A had sold his cows at B's price , he would have received Rs 320 . If B had sold his cows at A's price , he would have received Rs 245.

At what price did B sell each of his cows ?

what does they mean by

Code: 30 cows between them

i guess they wanted to say A+B had 30 cows ...........is it ? am i correct ?

My question is : do you think the language they used is perfect ? is that a correct english ?

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The wording is perfectly correct English. It means that the number of cows owned by the two people totals 30. For example, if I had three eggs and you had five egs, we'd have eight eggs between us. This is an idiom.

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what if one farmer had his back to the cows.
would the cows still be between them?

What if one farmer went to the pub after they counted them?

Tintin just ignore my post I'm playing silly word games.

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tintin,

This is an example of how the apparent ambiguity of a single sentence is resolved by the context in which it is embedded. Chomsky the linguist famous for the concept of "transformational grammar" used ambiguous sentences like "Flying planes can be dangerous" to illustrate the difference between "surface structure" and "deep structure" (of which ambiguous sentences have two or more according to their different meanings). Other linguists like Halliday resolved the issue by advocating a "grammar" which looked beyond the single sentence as its unit of analysis.

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Or as Walter used to write:

"Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana"

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fresco wrote:

tintin,

This is an example of how the apparent ambiguity of a single sentence is resolved by the context in which it is embedded. Chomsky the linguist famous for the concept of "transformational grammar" used ambiguous sentences like "Flying planes can be dangerous"

Good point.

"Flying planes can be dangerous" could mean any of the following things:

1) Flying (verb) = piloting. eg, Flying as the pilot in a plane can be dangerous

2) Flying(verb) = being flown. Assume the word [in]. eg, Flying IN a plane can be dangerous to that person.

3) "Flying planes" = noun phrase. eg, a plane that is flying around can be dangerous to someone outside the plane

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stuh505 wrote:

fresco wrote:
tintin,

This is an example of how the apparent ambiguity of a single sentence is resolved by the context in which it is embedded. Chomsky the linguist famous for the concept of "transformational grammar" used ambiguous sentences like "Flying planes can be dangerous"

Good point.

"Flying planes can be dangerous" could mean any of the following things:

1) Flying (verb) = piloting. eg, Flying as the pilot in a plane can be dangerous

2) Flying(verb) = being flown. Assume the word [in]. eg, Flying IN a plane can be dangerous to that person.

3) "Flying planes" = noun phrase. eg, a plane that is flying around can be dangerous to someone outside the plane

And if one were thrown across the workshop that also would be a dangerous flying plane

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30 cows between them

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