Hi Alan!
I read your article about articles and have some questions, but don’t know where to ask them. May be here?
You write: “A horse is a noble animal” - this represents no particular person or thing, but “The donkey is a very obstinate animal” - represents a class of objects. Sorry, I don’t understand what’s the difference!
And further: abstract nouns do not attract indefinite articles. But why Charlie hoped “that the terror could not be seen in his eyes”?
I suspect I’ve made some goofs, sorry, I’m going to learn by my mistakes
Don’t worry about making what you call ‘goofs’. That doesn’t matter at all! The difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’ with reference to ‘donkey’ and ‘horse’ is that ‘A horse is a noble animal’ is just a general statement whereas ‘The donkey is a very obstinate animal’ picks out the donkey as a particular example of an obstinate animal. I agree the difference is slight but the reason why we choose ‘the’ is because we want to particularise and the reason why we choose ‘a’ is to generalise.
On your second point - usually abstract nouns do not have articles attached but in this particular sentence: that the terror could not be seen in his eyes we are again particularising ‘terror’. It isn’t just ‘terror’ it is the terror you can’t see in his eyes.
Thank you Alan!
I think I understood these examples. But don’t know if I can see the difference in some other situation and choose right articles in that struggle “generalization vs. particularising”… Nuances are the most difficult matter in foreign language!
It is a future event in reality but you have quoted an example of indirect speech speech where the tenses that follow ‘she said’ change into a past form also.
English Grammar Tests, Elementary Level
