that's expected ...last year

[LQZ]

Solid domestic demand helped the German economy to grow by 3% overall in 2011, down from 3.6% in 2010, the government statistics office said Wednesday. The full-year figure is the best that's expected for any major developed economy last year, but it mainly reflects stellar German growth early in 2011. The Wall Street Journal

Dear all,

Is 's the shortened form is? If yes, is it clashing in the sentence, since the figure, 3%, represents last year's expectation. Thanks.


LQZ

 

[entangledbank]

No, it's normal, not clashing. Last year's figures take a while to come in and be collated, so they will be released at some future time: and a certain figure is expected. (Of course you need to know a bit about economic figures and financial years for this to make sense, but any reader of that sentence would.) I suppose there's some syntactic chicanery going on too, such as the time phrase 'last year' being inside the noun phrase 'any major developed economy last year', rather than being directly in the verb phrase. It sounds odder if we move it around in the VP:

the best that's expected last year for any major developed economy

And it sounds all right in the NP if we move that around:

Any major developed economy last year could be expected to improve on this figure.

So we're talking about an economy last year = last year's economy.

 

[LQZ]

No, it's normal, not clashing. Last year's figures take a while to come in and be collated, so they will be released at some future time: and a certain figure is expected. (Of course you need to know a bit about economic figures and financial years for this to make sense, but any reader of that sentence would.) I suppose there's some syntactic chicanery going on too, such as the time phrase 'last year' being inside the noun phrase 'any major developed economy last year', rather than being directly in the verb phrase. It sounds odder if we move it around in the VP:

the best that's expected last year for any major developed economy

And it sounds all right in the NP if we move that around:

Any major developed economy last year could be expected to improve on this figure.

So we're talking about an economy last year = last year's economy.

Thanks for your help, entangledbank.