4 ms·
There are some nouns that are always plurals e.g. "scissors" or "pants", and those things still arguably need indefinite/definite distinction, right? Actually n
by Joker_vD 7d ago
There are some nouns that are always plurals e.g. "scissors" or "pants", and those things still arguably need indefinite/definite distinction, right? Actually no, the very use of plain "scissors" instead of "*a scissors" demonstrates very well the redundancy of the indefinite article, but let's pretend.
- nutjob2 7d agoThat's just an oddity due to nominally singular items having plural names. "*a scissors/pants" is correctly "a pair of scissors/pants" and you still use the definite "the scissors/pants" So "get me scissors" is a bit odd but works only because the singular item happens to have a plural name.
- Joker_vD 7d agoAgain, e.g. Bulgarian uses едни ("ones") as essentially plural indefinite article, and for genuinely plural things too. It's not nearly as pervasive as the English usage (the null article is used in most cases), but it exists. While in English you could reply to "Where are you going?" with "To hang out with some friends" ('it doesn't really matter to you which ones exactly'), in Bulgarian that "some" would be translated as "едни", not "няколко" or "някои" (technically, you could use that last one, but the meaning would be that you're yourself not sure with whom exactly you're going to hang out there).