I feel this sentence written by Evelyn Waugh is needlessly confusing. "but for ours to amuse them" I needed to ponder her words to understand their meaning. Why would the writer choose ours? I believe this statement is more easily understood if written this way "We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for our ability to amuse them'"

I have lost nearly all my knowledge of grammar through years of non-use and ask questions to understand not criticize the writer.

I know what you mean. When I read the passage, I had to pause momentarily in order to associate "ours" with the noun phrase "their ability".

The pro-form "ours" is not too remote (only 5 words) from its antecedent, the NP "their ability", meaning we don't have to search around to work out what it actually means. If it were seriously remote, things might be different. Consider:

"We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, though this is of course an important part of the relationships we develop with them over the years, but for ours to amuse them".

In that example there's so much material (23 words to be precise) between the antecedent "their ability" and the pro-form "ours" that by the time we reach the latter we've forgotten what it really means and have to scramble around to work it out; probably by re-reading the passage.

Now that would be bad writing!





PaulM

Thank you so much for answering. Your comments helped me understand. Having checked Grammarly and one other online grammar checker I suspected the statement was grammatically correct. I am happy to learn why.

Thank you
Paul