Hi,

I saw no one.

Is it grammatically correct to say?

No one I saw.

'No one I saw' is not native as a stand-alone sentence.

However, it could be an answer to a question:

A: Who took my cell phone?

B: No one I saw.

Or, as a noun clause:

No one I saw took that cell phone.

The cell phone was taken by no one I saw.

I see.

Thanks a lot.

quote:

However, it could be an answer to a question:

A: Who took my cell phone?
# B: No one I saw.

Yes, that's a possibility. But perhaps we should point out that this is not an inverted sentence with the object placed at the beginning. It's a compound -- No one that I saw. -- with the relative clause omitted.

And it would mean none of the people that I saw took your phone.

The relative clause is '(that) I saw.'

'No one I saw' has a different meaning from 'I saw no one.' This latter is, of course, a complete sentence meaning that I saw zero people, that no people at all were there.

We could say:

No one did I see.

This is a rather poetic presentation of 'I saw no one,' and is, too, a complete sentence.

quote:

'No one I saw' has a different meaning from 'I saw no one.'

Please point out the difference between the two.

quote:

'No one I saw' has a different meaning from 'I saw no one.'

When a speaker says, 'I saw no one,' he means, or implies, that no one was there. Zero people were there.

When the speaker says, 'No one that I saw,' there is the implication that someone might have been there, but that the speaker did not actually see that person. Maybe the person was not obvious, or maybe the speaker did not want to implicate that person who was there, or maybe the speaker just wasn't paying attention.

Crystal clear.

Do No one I saw & No one that I saw mean the same?

Yes, Izzy, they do.

Thanks.