English grammar

@contrex,

Quote:

Question marks are optional at the end of commands or requests phrased as questions e.g. "Will you please send me a progress report by June 10th?"

How might your example sentence be different than the interrogative sentence you supplied;

"Do you understand English grammar?"?

Maybe this is the part that Joe(I don't understand English grammar either)Nation thought constituted "an excellent answer".

Quote:

So you feel "A tree is part of the nature" and "A tree is part of nature" are equally grammatical? or "The death comes to us all" and "Death comes to us all"?

Is this really a grammatical issue?

0 Replies

@JTT,

Quote:

but I don't think that the differences are terribly subtle.

They are to me but I’m no grammarian

1 Reply

@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

Quote:
but I don't think that the differences are terribly subtle.
They are to me but I’m no grammarian

Non-countable nouns can take a definite article ('the') when they are used in a specific (definite!) way.

For example if I asked my son what he is studying he would say "I am studying geography." Not "the geography". He is referring to the topic of geography in a general, non-specific way. However if I asked him what that book on the table is about, he might say "It's about the geography of Brazil".

That doesn't seem 'subtle' to me.

1 Reply

@contrex,

What you’re asserting seems to make sense but the general principle that nothing is entirely anything while everything is partly something else suggests to take a non-countable noun when used in a specific way must surely entail manifold subtleties, for instance conforms with “a lie” but doesn’t explain why we say “the truth"

But I’m no grammarian

1 Reply

@dalehileman,

Quote:

for instance conforms with “a lie” but doesn’t explain why we say “the truth"

We often, but not always, say "the truth" because we want it to be specific to either 'a truth' or a collection of truths that we are then discussing.

In such a situation, if a person used 'a' truth, it would hold a meaning/ a nuance of a universal truth. When we want to describe 'a' universal truth, there's nothing to stop us from using that meaning. This isn't so much an issue of grammar as it is a pragmatic/semantic issue.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

We often, but not always, say "the truth" because we want it to be specific to either 'a truth' or a collection of truths that we are then discussing.

That would lead me to suppose then we ought to say “the lie"

2 Replies

@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

That would lead me to suppose then we ought to say “the lie"

Some of us do, sometimes. To "give the lie" to something is to reveal it as false. Example: This survey gives the lie to the idea that Britain is moving towards economic recovery.

1 Reply

@dalehileman,

I think the following results accurately show the frequency of the four noted collocations.

Google Advanced Search - English only/no specified region/no filtering

Exact phrase search
"a truth"
About 11,200,000 results

Exact phrase search
"the truth"
About 754,000,000 results

Exact phrase search
"the lie"
About 16,900,000 results

Exact phrase search
"a lie"
About 93,100,000 results

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"Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

- "I do."

1 Reply

@contrex,

"A lie" is specific.

"The truth" is general.

but note also

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." -Austen

1 Reply

@Joe Nation,

Joe Nation wrote:

Excellent answer, Contrex.

AGREED.

David

0 Replies

@McTag,

Quote:

"A lie" is specific.

"The truth" is general.

Do you mean generally, McTag, or specific to C's post?

1 Reply

@JTT,

generally

0 Replies

@McTag,

That should be "swear", sorry.

(I've never had to say that, myself Smile

)

0 Replies

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