3 ms·
I don't disagree though perhaps it's worth mentioning that sentences such as "the great spotted woodpecker is a medium-sized woodpecker" are used in English wit
by bloak 3y ago
I don't disagree though perhaps it's worth mentioning that sentences such as "the great spotted woodpecker is a medium-sized woodpecker" are used in English with the meaning "great spotted woodpeckers are medium-sized woodpeckers" so it seems to me that "apples are red" is grammatically a possible meaning of "the apple is red" even if it would be stylistically and pragmatically so weird that nobody would ever do that except perhaps as some kind of joke.
- smegsicle 3y agogrammatically you'd capitalize Great Spotted Woodpecker, and similarly if speaking of all apples as a category, Apple should form a proper noun
- karatinversion 3y agoIndeed, and even with apples, we can say "the apple is native to Central Asia" without meaning a particular apple.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoExcept that apples can also be green, whereas great spotted woodpeckers are always a medium-sized woodpecker species. So 'the apple is red" implies at least a red variety of apples, never all apples, so "the" doesn't cover the whole group. But "the great spotted woodpecker is a medium-sized woodpecker" does cover the whole group (species). "The" can be either a definite or indefinite article, depending on context. That in turh changes "is" between equivalence and implication. "An apple is red" does not imply that "Red is an apple". Use of the indefinite article makes the non-equivalence clearer.