At least that’s how I feel sometimes. I don’t think I’m the only one.
I am seeking an opinion on whether something is standard English or not.
“The previous person who held this position got killed under a truck.”
Is it acceptable to use ‘previous’ like that? I can’t tell anymore.
(or maybe it’s the Taiwan Beer)
[quote=“dearpeter”]At least that’s how I feel sometimes. I don’t think I’m the only one.
I am seeking an opinion on whether something is standard English or not.
“The previous person who held this position got killed under a truck.”
Is it acceptable to use ‘previous’ like that? I can’t tell anymore.
(or maybe it’s the Taiwan Beer)
[/quote]
Technically, yes, in my opinion. But the formality of “the previous person who held this position” clashes with the informality of “got killed under a truck”, also in my opinion.
Colloquial: “The last guy who had this job got killed under a truck.”
Formal: “The previous person who held this position was killed by a truck.”
I feel uncertain about the whole killed under a truck phrase - to me that could mean someone murdered him while both the murderer and victim were under a truck, not necessarily that a truck killed the person. It’s definitely ambiguous.
That’s irrelevant. I was being silly, sorry. The sentence I was contemplating (for a test) was:
The previous person who held this job went crazy, but I think you’ll do fine.
(Just as bad I guess, by your standards. I guess I try to entertain the poor high school students.)
But I think I’ll go with:
Five _____ winners of the Nobel Prize showed up to congratulate Dr. Jamison.
The “previous” guy got his tie caught in the shredder, but he looks fine really.
Oh, my. The next vocabulary word is budding.
The budding young sophomore stared coyly across the room.
I’ll have to use Sara:
sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html
(such a cool tool)
“Previous” sounds dubious to me in all of these examples. “Last” sounds much better, colloquial or not.
I don’t think you should suffix a selector ("… who …") with previous. I have no justification for this at all.
Ahem… That’s “more badder” or “more worse”.
You’re using previous as an adjective to describe a person. I know from experience that a person can be described as: Fat, old, bald, stupid, and drunk. But previous? I don’t think so.
You will find previous works better as an adverb:
The person who held this job previously was killed under a truck.
Aha. So it’s not okay. The plot thickens. Who claims to know that it’s not okay. I could be convinced.
“The previous person who” gets 821 hits on Google.
(By the way, if anyone feels the need to tell me “last” would be preferable, then you just don’t get the question.)
I would never write it like that. I’d write it as any of the following:
“The previous holder of this position…”
“The last person to hold this position…”
“The person who previously held this position…”
“The person who last held this position…”
There are probably other alternatives, but those are the ones that spring immediately to mind.
[quote=“dearpeter”]That’s irrelevant. I was being silly, sorry. The sentence I was contemplating (for a test) was:
The previous person who held this job went crazy, but I think you’ll do fine.
(Just as bad I guess, by your standards. I guess I try to entertain the poor high school students.)
But I think I’ll go with:
Five _____ winners of the Nobel Prize showed up to congratulate Dr. Jamison.
The “previous” guy got his tie caught in the shredder, but he looks fine really.[/quote]
I would say “the person who had your job previously went crazy, but I think that you will do fine”
I don’t think there’s anything technically wrong with “the previous person who held this position”, but it does sound overly formal and stilted. I would re-cast the phrase. There’s nothing wrong with using “last” here, even in very formal writing.
“previous person” gets 119,000 Google hits, and the first page of hits appear to be from native-speaking English sources.
As to “budding sophomore”, this is wrong in my opinion. The word “budding” implies being at the preparational, aspiring or beginning stages of a long-term career/profession/hobby/activity.
When one is a sophomore, one simply is a sophomore (a status lasting one academic year, a very short time). It’s not some long-term goal being worked toward.
On the other hand, “budding journalist” or “budding scientist” is OK.
TTIWWP 
You shouldn’t ‘use’ people, dearpeter. That’s just wrong!
I associate budding with breasts and nubility, and while sophomores are likely to be budding in both, I’d be careful about using the word in a way that might suggest it’s their state of being sophomores that’s budding rather than those other delightful attributes.
Agreeance with Omni is the order of the day, also with regard to his previous post about the use of previous.
However, it’s unlikely that high school students are being taught the more provocative connotations of budding, unless their teacher is a bit of a perv.
held previously gets 35,000,000 hits.
previously held gets 30,600,000 hits.
in another comparison, “person who previously” gets like 50,000 hits, while “previous person who” scores 911.
“budding breasts” gets 354,000
“budding sophomores” got 30,600 hits.
But “sophomores with budding breasts” gets only 731.