7 ms·

> "the" is used to mark noun phrases that are already present in the conversational context, and "a" is used to introduce new noun phrases into the conversation

> "the" is used to mark noun phrases that are already present in the conversational context, and "a" is used to introduce new noun phrases into the conversational context. > (Compare "there's some guy outside scaring customers away" with "there are some guys outside scaring customers away", then consider that a would only be permissible in the first one.) This rule is OK but it fails for the following case: A man you've never seen before runs into your office and says "The President is outside!" Now, the President wasn't part of your conversational context, in fact there was no conversational context, nor any context with the speaker. But "a President is outside!" is clearly wrong. More generally, any attempt to give simple rules for this part of English grammar will fail, and will not generalize to other languages with articles. The rules of natural languages are extraordinarily complex, although we have the illusion that we can understand them explicitly. That's why rule-based NLP systems have always seemed attractive, and have always failed.

schoen 7y ago
> Now, the President wasn't part of your conversational context, in fact there was no conversational context, nor any context with the speaker. That's an awesome example! My proposed patch would be: singular instantiated concrete nouns in English always need a determiner, and we should use the most specific determiner that pragmatics will give a plausible meaning to. (So also "our mother lives in Boston" is preferable to ?"the mother lives in Boston" but the second option is possible in some contexts.) > More generally, any attempt to give simple rules for this part of English grammar will fail, and will not generalize to other languages with articles. Yeah, that's a great point. For example, Portuguese commonly requires articles with abstract nouns, where English would forbid them. "O amor é um dos maiores prazeres da vida." '(the) love is one of the greatest pleasures of (the) life' Someone learning one language from the other might first think "oh, great, this language has definite and indefinite articles, just like my native language -- it's no problem, I already understand this". But that understanding will fall down when confronted with situations like abstract nouns. Ancient Greek has definite articles but no indefinite articles, and I was taught that definite articles are mandatory with people's proper names (ὁ Πλάτων, '(the) Plato'). But it's apparently more complicated than that, because for example in https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0257%3Abook%3D3%3Achapter%3D1 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... sometimes he's called ὁ Πλάτων and sometimes Πλάτων (for reasons that I don't grasp). And similarly in Portuguese, it's common to refer to people in the third person by a proper name plus definite article (o João, a Maria) but neither obligatory nor universal. My intuition is that it's a very mild honorific and that it's only done when we think the listener is already familiar with the person referred to, but I'm not a native speaker and I bet that intuition isn't quite right either. So yeah! These rules feel super-simple, and they're really not.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
As I noted, there are many ways to use "the". You're correct that the rule I gave doesn't cover most of them. You're mostly wrong in the details: > Now, the President wasn't part of your conversational context, in fact there was no conversational context, nor any context with the speaker. This is very wrong; the President, like all proper nouns, is part of the conversational context. You may validly assume that your listener knows the identity of "the President" in the same way you assume that they know the meaning of the word "outside". For this reason, all proper nouns, arthrous [= marked with "the"] or not, are always definite. Some English proper nouns are arthrous and some aren't; there is no rule governing this. > But "a President is outside!" is clearly wrong. It's not ill-formed in any way[1], though it raises some questions about how you know there's a president out there without also knowing which president it is. But more importantly, I restricted my comment to cases where "the" contrasts with "a", and this is not such a case. "The President" and "a president" are not parallel formations. [1] If you insist on capitalizing President [referring to a specific known individual], then it is indeed ill-formed. Proper nouns are definite and "a" is indefinite.
kaoD 7y ago
> any attempt to give simple rules for this part of English grammar will fail, and will not generalize to other languages with articles Can you elaborate? (Genuinely interested: I like languages, don't know much about NLP). GP's explanation was just wrong, but articles are pretty well defined, easy to explain, and generalize well to other languages. - "The" (definite article) marks a noun that refers to a particular instance of the class designated by that noun, distinctly recognizable from other instances. - "A" (indefinite article) marks a noun that refers to a generic instance of the class that isn't explicitly recognizable among other instances.
- yongjik 7y ago
  Consider: The Philippines The United States The Great Lakes the poor a means of production a number of hamsters the number of hamsters a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants A lion chased him. (a particular lion) A lion is a ferocious beast. (lions in general)
  - kaoD 7y ago
    > The Philippines, The United States, The Great Lakes I see nothing wrong? The Philippine (Islands). The United (States). The Great (Lakes). > the poor This is a challenge for NLP but only due to the ellipsis. "the poor (people)", where "people" is elided. I don't think most native speakers realize "poor" is an adjective here. > a means of production > a number of hamsters, the number of hamsters > a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants Sorry, non-native speaker here. What do you mean?
    - yongjik 7y ago
      > The Philippines, The United States, The Great Lakes The point is that they are all names for a unique entity. There are no multiple Philippines - there's only one. Yet we should say "The Philippines", while we cannot say "The Switzerland." Similarly, we aren't talking about "a particular group of united states among multiple such groups" - for example, nobody calls Germany "The United States", even if it's made of many states. > "the poor (people)", where "people" is elided. The problem with this analysis is that "the poor people" can be used to mean "these particular group of poor people we are talking about", but "the poor" can't - it's not a definite group of people. E.g., "I met those refugees on the road, so I asked the poor a few questions." (??) > a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants I'm saying: why can't we say "a garment" or "a pants"? (Hmm maybe we can say "a garment"? I'm not sure.) Seriously, a pants should be a thing: it's clearly one item. Has anyone ever seen someone wearing "a pant" (i.e., half a pair of pants)?
swiley 7y ago
Quoting is a kind of escape in any language. Even in programming languages you could use string literals to make the same pedantic arguments about the grammar.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

schoen 7y ago

> Now, the President wasn't part of your conversational context, in fact there was no conversational context, nor any context with the speaker. That's an awesome example! My proposed patch would be: singular instantiated concrete nouns in English always need a determiner, and we should use the most specific determiner that pragmatics will give a plausible meaning to. (So also "our mother lives in Boston" is preferable to ?"the mother lives in Boston" but the second option is possible in some contexts.) > More generally, any attempt to give simple rules for this part of English grammar will fail, and will not generalize to other languages with articles. Yeah, that's a great point. For example, Portuguese commonly requires articles with abstract nouns, where English would forbid them. "O amor é um dos maiores prazeres da vida." '(the) love is one of the greatest pleasures of (the) life' Someone learning one language from the other might first think "oh, great, this language has definite and indefinite articles, just like my native language -- it's no problem, I already understand this". But that understanding will fall down when confronted with situations like abstract nouns. Ancient Greek has definite articles but no indefinite articles, and I was taught that definite articles are mandatory with people's proper names (ὁ Πλάτων, '(the) Plato'). But it's apparently more complicated than that, because for example in https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0257%3Abook%3D3%3Achapter%3D1 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... sometimes he's called ὁ Πλάτων and sometimes Πλάτων (for reasons that I don't grasp). And similarly in Portuguese, it's common to refer to people in the third person by a proper name plus definite article (o João, a Maria) but neither obligatory nor universal. My intuition is that it's a very mild honorific and that it's only done when we think the listener is already familiar with the person referred to, but I'm not a native speaker and I bet that intuition isn't quite right either. So yeah! These rules feel super-simple, and they're really not.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

As I noted, there are many ways to use "the". You're correct that the rule I gave doesn't cover most of them. You're mostly wrong in the details: > Now, the President wasn't part of your conversational context, in fact there was no conversational context, nor any context with the speaker. This is very wrong; the President, like all proper nouns, is part of the conversational context. You may validly assume that your listener knows the identity of "the President" in the same way you assume that they know the meaning of the word "outside". For this reason, all proper nouns, arthrous [= marked with "the"] or not, are always definite. Some English proper nouns are arthrous and some aren't; there is no rule governing this. > But "a President is outside!" is clearly wrong. It's not ill-formed in any way[1], though it raises some questions about how you know there's a president out there without also knowing which president it is. But more importantly, I restricted my comment to cases where "the" contrasts with "a", and this is not such a case. "The President" and "a president" are not parallel formations. [1] If you insist on capitalizing President [referring to a specific known individual], then it is indeed ill-formed. Proper nouns are definite and "a" is indefinite.

kaoD 7y ago

> any attempt to give simple rules for this part of English grammar will fail, and will not generalize to other languages with articles Can you elaborate? (Genuinely interested: I like languages, don't know much about NLP). GP's explanation was just wrong, but articles are pretty well defined, easy to explain, and generalize well to other languages. - "The" (definite article) marks a noun that refers to a particular instance of the class designated by that noun, distinctly recognizable from other instances. - "A" (indefinite article) marks a noun that refers to a generic instance of the class that isn't explicitly recognizable among other instances.

yongjik 7y ago
Consider: The Philippines The United States The Great Lakes the poor a means of production a number of hamsters the number of hamsters a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants A lion chased him. (a particular lion) A lion is a ferocious beast. (lions in general)
- kaoD 7y ago
  > The Philippines, The United States, The Great Lakes I see nothing wrong? The Philippine (Islands). The United (States). The Great (Lakes). > the poor This is a challenge for NLP but only due to the ellipsis. "the poor (people)", where "people" is elided. I don't think most native speakers realize "poor" is an adjective here. > a means of production > a number of hamsters, the number of hamsters > a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants Sorry, non-native speaker here. What do you mean?
  - yongjik 7y ago
    > The Philippines, The United States, The Great Lakes The point is that they are all names for a unique entity. There are no multiple Philippines - there's only one. Yet we should say "The Philippines", while we cannot say "The Switzerland." Similarly, we aren't talking about "a particular group of united states among multiple such groups" - for example, nobody calls Germany "The United States", even if it's made of many states. > "the poor (people)", where "people" is elided. The problem with this analysis is that "the poor people" can be used to mean "these particular group of poor people we are talking about", but "the poor" can't - it's not a definite group of people. E.g., "I met those refugees on the road, so I asked the poor a few questions." (??) > a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants I'm saying: why can't we say "a garment" or "a pants"? (Hmm maybe we can say "a garment"? I'm not sure.) Seriously, a pants should be a thing: it's clearly one item. Has anyone ever seen someone wearing "a pant" (i.e., half a pair of pants)?

swiley 7y ago

Quoting is a kind of escape in any language. Even in programming languages you could use string literals to make the same pedantic arguments about the grammar.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]