英語口語中的“twenty grand”用於表示財富時，指“twenty thousand dollars/bucks”。當中的“grand”是修飾無聲成份“total”的形容詞，跟同樣是無聲的“thousand”和“bucks”結合。以上分析旨在說明，語言機制不要求所有活躍的句法語義成份都要唸出來。

Colloquial English monetary expressions like twenty grand, in the sense of twenty thousand dollars/bucks, are to be analyzed with grand as an adjective modifying a silent version of total, in combination with silent counterparts of thousand and bucks. This analysis supports the idea that the language faculty does not burden itself with any requirement that syntactically and semantically active elements always be pronounced.