Friday, January 28, 2011

Using "the" and "a" (or "an")

The word "the" is what is called an "article," or, more precisely, a "definite article." Since it is the only such article in the English language, it's probably better to refer to it as the definite article. The only other article in English is "a," also known as "an." This is the "indefinite article." The definite article (the) tells us (usually) that we are dealing with a specific thing, while the indefinite article (a or an) is used when referring to a general category or concept.

For various reasons, non-native English speakers have a terrible time with both of these deceptively innocent little words -- possibly because of the typical models provided in so many beginner's textbooks. For example, many such books will use sentences like the following: "The boy picked up the book and began to read." This is a terrible model for beginners because in fact no native English speaker would ever speak or write such a sentence by itself and out of context. Before we can refer to "the boy," we have to have a definite boy in mind, and before he can pick up "the book," there must be a specific book for him to pick up. On the other hand, "A boy picked up a book and began to read" is indefinite (non-specific) and thus can be used by itself with no need for us to have a particular boy or book already in mind.

If we are dealing with the plural, however, we can't use "a" or "an," which is strictly limited to modifying singular nouns. In this case, we would need to use the word "some," as in: "Some boys picked up some books and began to read." We could also write: "Some boys picked up books and began to read." Which brings us to another very tricky issue: when an article is necessary and when it can be omitted. This is probably the most difficult issue for non-native English speakers to deal with and it is in fact very difficult to explain. I won't try to explain it for now, but will simply provide the correct usage when appropriate.

In the last post, I concentrated on the well known author Slavoj Zizek, to demonstrate how even a very experienced writer can make basic errors in the use of articles. To be fair, I must also point out that his more recent writings show great improvement in this respect -- possibly because his English has improved, but more likely because he is now successful enough to regularly work with professional editors. However, working with an editor is no guarantee of error-free copy. To my surprise, I've found many grammatical errors of all sorts in articles published in highly respectable, peer-reviewed journals. I'll concentrate, for now, on problems with "the" and "a."

Here, for example, is the title of an article published in a leading scientfic journal, BMC Evolutionary Biology: "Reconstructing Indian-Australian phylogenetic link". In this case, the authors simply left out the article altogether, a very common error. The title should be rewritten as "Reconstructing an Indian-Australian phylogenetic link." A good editor would have picked that up immediately.

An excerpt from the same paper contains more errors in the use of articles, along with several other serious errors in basic grammar:
The complete mtDNA sequencing indicate that both Australians and New Guineans exclusively belongs to the out of-Africa founder types M and N, thus ultimately descended from the same African emigrants ~50 to 70 kyBP, as all other Eurasians [24]. However, in context of the Eurasian phylogeny [25-35], shared branches more recent than the founding types M, N, and R have not been reported so far, except a shared variant at nucleotide position 8793 between Australian specific haplogroup M42 and East/Southeast Eurasian specific haplogroup M10 [24].
This passage should read as follows:

Complete mtDNA sequencing indicates that both Australians and New Guineans exclusively belong to the out-of-
Africa founder types M and N, and are thus ultimately descended from the same African emigrants, dating from ~50 to 70 kyBP, as all other Eurasians [24]. However, in the context of Eurasian phylogeny [25-35], shared branches more recent than the founding types M, N, and R have not been reported so far, except a shared variant at nucleotide position 8793, between the Australian specific haplogroup M42 and the East/Southeast Eurasian specific haplogroup M10 [24].
Here is another example of problems with the definite article, also from a peer-reviewed journal. There are some spelling errors as well:
It is concluded that, without the symbiolic partners providing the Mbuti with farm foods, a hunting-dependent life in the Ituri Forest would be quite hard and require much more effort in the subsistence activities than that made by the present-day Mbuti, although it would not be impossible from calorific viewpoint.
A good copy editor would have rewritten this passage as follows:

It is concluded that, without symbiotic partners providing the Mbuti with farm foods, a hunting-dependent life in the Ituri Forest would be quite hard and require much more effort in subsistence activities than that made by the present-day Mbuti, although it would not be impossible from a caloric viewpoint.
From the same paper: "There exists a marked difference in the feeding rhythm between herbivores and carnivores," which should read: "There is a marked difference in feeding rhythm between herbivores and carnivores."

No more for today. See you soon. And remember, you are invited to use the "Comments" window to send me passages from your own writings, if you would like me to go over them for possible errors.

8 comments:

  1. Thank you for this blog. You can expect many queries from me :-).

    The articles are my biggest enemies (I guess mainly because Dravidian languages don't have the concept of articles, and probably with the exception of Brahui).

    Now to my first question. Somewhere I wrote;
    "But now the main point is how do you connect those points to your arguments."

    I feel that statement is not very natural.

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  2. Hi Maju. Nice to see you posting here. You are my first "customer." :-)

    You are right, that statement has some problems. For one thing, you repeat the word "point," which is stylistically weak. Also, "is how do you connect" is a bit awkward. Here's how I would write it:

    "But now the main question is, how to connect those points to your arguments." Some people might object to beginning a sentence with the word "but." But this doesn't bother me. :-)

    You shouldn't be too upset if you have problems with articles, because almost every non-native English speaker does. And when I try to think of what rule to use, I realize how confusing it can be. I can spot the problems right away, but I can't always explain why they are wrong. There ARE guidelines, however, which can be very helpful, and I'll be discussing them soon.

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  3. I think not doing anything unsuitable in publishing this letter of Prof. Fulvio Cruciani which is the response to the first two posts of this thread sent to one of his colleagues, Prof. Rosaria Scozzari.
    This isn’t in recognition of me, but of everyone of us who has something to say on this matter, who did exams at his own expense putting the results at everybody’s disposal. Prof. Cruciani (and his colleagues) is one of the most esteemed researcher worldwide, and not like many others who either for ideology or other have written papers that I, but others too, have enjoyed myself to dissect and practically to thwart. His V-series has given fundamental contributions to deepen the origin of many haplogroups, above all E and R, because he practises the science, and this science (like every other one) is made by proofs, in this case by new fundamental SNPs. After there are the interpretations, and for this it isn’t said that the specialist is advantaged. Who of us knows a dozen of languages (ancient and modern ones), has cultivated Glottology, History, Geography and many other disciplines perhaps he too has something to say.

    Caro Gioiello,
    Rosaria Scozzari mi ha girato la sua email.
    I vari post sui blog di antropologia rappresentano per noi una ricca fonte di informazioni su cui riflettere.
    Circa le tue ipotesi riportate in questa mail, non mi sento né di contraddirle, ne di appoggiarle, ma le terrò in considerazione.
    Spero che in futuro si arrivi ad una comprensione più chiara del nostro passato attraverso gli studi sulla diversità genetica.
    Cordiali saluti
    Fulvio Cruciani

    Fulvio Cruciani, PhD
    Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie "Charles Darwin"
    Sapienza Università di Roma
    P.le Aldo Moro 5
    00185 Rome, Italy
    (…)

    (Dear Gioiello,
    Rosaria Scozzari forwarded to me your email.
    Many posts on anthropology blogs are for us a rich source of information to be minded.
    Re. your hypotheses reported in your mail, I don’t feel either to contradict them or to support, but I’ll take them in consideration.
    Hope that in the future we’ll be able to reach a clearer understanding of our past by studies on genetic diversity.
    Kind Regards,
    Fulvio Cruciani)

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  4. Have you anything to say about my English? I am a teacher of Italian, Latin, History and Geography in the High School, and was criticized by a colleague of mine who teaches English for having said "I think not doing": may we accept it for an ellictic form of "I think I am not doing"?

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  5. Thank you DocG. By the way, it's manju and not Maju...I suppose Maju would be bit annoyed :-).

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  6. Greetings, Gioiello. In reference to your first comment, I am confused. Do you feel that I was being disrespectful to Prof. Cruciani by pointing out some errors? That was certainly not my intention. I simply went through some of the many papers I've collected over the years to look for interesting examples to discuss. I didn't pay any attention to who wrote them.

    Professor Cruciani is a recognized authority on population genetics whose work I greatly respect and admire. However, if he is, in fact, the author of the passage on the Mbuti Pygmies that I quoted, then he has some problems with the English language. So what? So do many others like him. It's not at all unusual and is no reflection on his abilities as a scientist or teacher.

    In reference to your second post, regarding your English, then I must say yes, I see several problems. "I think not doing" is not only incorrect but also confusing, because there is no subject for the verb "doing." So we don't know who it is that is "not doing." You might think that the "I" in this sentence serves as the subject for both verbs, but this is not the case, so you must repeat the "I" to make the phrase clear. "I think I am not doing" is correct but also a bit awkward sounding. Better would be: "I don't think I am doing . . . "

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  7. Sorry, Manju, I definitely confused you with Maju -- and yes he would be annoyed! :-(

    He could also use some help with his English, but may not want to admit it. :-)

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  8. HI DocG
    Nice blog. I live in Pune, in the western part of India. Your blog is useful to people like us. We do not belong to an English-speaking country. So we tend to make mistakes. Also our sentences and phrases are sometimes aukward and clumsy.

    I also write a blog. Once I encountered an Indian celebrity's aukward sentence, which I corrected as part of my blog post. You can read this post here:http://jugshree.blogspot.com/2010/09/celebritys-clumsy-sentence.html

    Thanks

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