I've just met Mario

[Intoarut]

Hello everyone: Here's a little "circle-the-sentence-that-best-follows-the-first-sentence" exercise that I don't get....

I've just met Mario
a. He's nice.
b. He's an old friend.

According to the key, the correct answer is a. And my question is: If you take "I've just met Mario" as "I've just seen him," so then b. could also be correct..... or not? :roll:​

 

[Tdol]

Yes, it could. This is a weakness of this sort of exercise as it's often possible to think of contexts where more than one answer is correct. The person writing the exercise has an idea of what they're testing, but doesn't think of all the possibilities- I have done it myself many times. This one could be fixed by saying I've just been introduced to Mario, but even then someone might say that it is possible for someone who doesn't know you are friends with Mario and introduced you. And so on. ;-)

 

[Intoarut]

Thank you!

 

[jahildebrandt]

B. could make sense, but just implies only as well as recently. If you only met Mario recently, how could he be an old friend?

Then again, the sentence depends on context. I just met [with] Mario [in the lobby five minutes ago.] But out of context, A is the "best" choice between the two.

Don't worry, even as a native speaker of English, I've missed questions in my linguistics classes due to there being "better" answers than the ones I've given. It's really annoying if you're a student, so I understand.