indefinite article

When a numeral or a genitive are determiners they can be preceded by the indefinite article; for instance, [a hundred] charges, [a colleague's] house; when they are modifiers they cannot be preceded by the indefinite article; for instance, these [hundred] charges, the [dollar's] worth of coins (Huddleston--Pullum 2002: 372).

The fact that English non-count abstract nouns such as knowledge are compatible with the indefinite article a/an is not only perplexing for second language (L2) learners of English but also troublesome for both native and non-native English teachers.

Finally, at p.282, last three lines in the last but one paragraph, the indefinite article "a" after useful could be deleted.

Unidiomatic renderings such as "to drink one (for the German indefinite article ein) cup in honour of the god" (p.

The apple is a new thing when it is introduced in the first sentence, so it takes the indefinite article "a/n." In the next sentence, the reader knows of the apple's existence, so the apple becomes a familiar noun, and takes the familiar article "the." This example conforms nicely to the grammatical rules; however, articles in the real world rarely work out in such nice forms.

According to writer Wes Howard-Brook, the lack of either a definite or indefinite article in the Greek indicates that the protagonist is not only "a man born blind" but also "humanity, blind from birth." Blind humanity is indicted subtly but profoundly in John 9:8-9.

THE recent debate about the humble indefinite article ('a' and 'an') before words beginning with the letter 'h' has seen some misinformation printed.

Consider, for instance, the case of "indefinite generics." When "indefinite generics" are defined according to formal criteria and understood as a term referring to noun phrases that contain an indefinite article and, as such, receive a generic interpretation (of whatever kind), cross-linguistic investigations very soon lead to the result that many languages do not have "indefinite generics" quite simply because they do not possess an indefinite article, let alone one which could occur in generic contexts.

Van Fraasen holds that objectification is just a (emphasis on indefinite article) paradigm of inquiry (p.

The results of this approach are clearly presented; and the author of this section extracts some salient conclusions concerning, for example, the importance of dialogue (with the frequency of subject pronouns, particularly in the 'tu' form, and verbs such as 'repondit', 'repliquai', 'repartit', 'poursuivit', etc.), and the unusual frequency of the indefinite article, 'un' (the author points to its use to designate something or someone as yet unknown, which, as he explains, is a 'situation tres courante dans ce roman ou les personnages vont de decouverte a decouverte' (p.