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"later" and "later on" | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| chenshujian Diglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5448 days ago 122 posts - 139 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: French | Message 1 of 3 30 October 2012 at 3:32am | IP Logged |
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Anyone please tell me the subtle differences between "later" and "later on"?
And one more question: "We will follow up the lawyer's revising on the contract." Is this a natural and correct sentence? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4468 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 2 of 3 30 October 2012 at 4:47am | IP Logged |
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That's a tough one. I get the sense of "later on" perhaps being a little more colloquial. I've been interchanging the expressions in different sentences and they come out with the same meaning. However, there was one exception. It's with the expression, "See you later." In American English (not sure about British), when you say, "See you later," it's just a way of saying bye. It doesn't necessarily mean you intend to see the person later. However, if you said, "See you later on," you would indeed be expecting to see that person at a later time.
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| michaelyus Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4563 days ago 53 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Italian, French, Cantonese, Korean, Catalan, Vietnamese, Lingala, Spanish Studies: Hokkien | Message 3 of 3 30 October 2012 at 5:13am | IP Logged |
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"Revising" in its meaning of "making alterations to" is rarely found as a gerund. Also, "revising on" is incorrect as a phrasal verb [the Google n-Gram Viewer shows that the few instances of "revising on" are due to "revising" being used without a direct object, and the "on" being part of a set phrase, usually adverbial, e.g. "on a continual basis", "on the computer"). "Revision of", with a bona fide derived noun, is better. Alternatives include "revisions of" (depending on whether you want to emphasise the number of individual changes made) and "revised edition of".
Also, an alternative to "follow up" + direct object is "follow up on" + direct object. I have the feeling that "follow up with" is the most common use of "follow up", but that has a slightly different meaning, and is generally used in the structure "follow [direct object] up with [additional noun phrase]"; "follow up with [noun phrase]" generally implies the true direct object has been mentioned above, and so refers to an additional item to follow. I don't know if that is the meaning you want. Otherwise "to follow up on", in the meaning of "to chase up, to pursue, to return to, to focus one's attention on something again" is fine. "Follow up" is common, but ambiguous - I think intonation may be able to distinguish the two meanings though. "Later" and "later on" - that's very tricky. "Later on" is of course not really used much as an adjective, certainly not in attributive position (just before the noun). Plus the use of "later" as a greeting equivalent to "goodbye" does not occur with "later on". Their use as an adverb is where the difficulty lies: in general, "later" can always replace "later on", and "later" is more acceptable in a greater range of formal contexts. "Later on" can refer to being further in time than "later", especially when they are used together: "Later I'll do this, then later on I'll do that". In "see you later" vs "see you later on", there might be a pragmatic difference - "later on" implies some sort of specificity or definiteness, whereas a bare "see you later", as a set phrase (gaining ground in British English, though still not nearly as common in daily life) may not imply that. However, this varies from speaker to speaker (and situation to situation, relationship to relationship)! Some people use "later on" for a more distant future or a longer time interval, but the actual boundary varies depending on e.g. the person's perception of time, the subject of the interval of time (especially whether the events are instantaneous [generally use "later"] or of long duration ["later on"]; e.g. "the apple fell, and later (on?) split open" vs "the apples were picked, and later (on) cooked"). However, I wonder if prosody has a bearing on it... Edited by michaelyus on 30 October 2012 at 5:17am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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