English Grammar Questions
Q17: Using, or not,
the Definite Article "the"
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From LK - Russia Dear Sirs, I have quite a few questions about English grammar to which I cannot find answers, and I wonder if you could help me with at least one of them which has been nagging me for a while. I am Russian, a former English teacher, only for the last fifteen years I have been working as a translator/interpreter. Now, all English Grammar books say that in expressions similar to "Room 20, Chapter 2" no article is used--I learned this rule when I was 7. In my translations I often have to use expressions/forms similar to: According to Article 7 of
the Federal Law No 57 ... | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Again, to all readers, please, try to send your emails to us only in text format. Now, in spite of their perplexing simplicity, both English articles are used improperly, possibly more than any other sentence element. We have mentioned only two instances of using the definite article, in our short answer to LK, but there are many more. Further, we have to point out that English grammar is not restrictive, dear readers: we can express the same message in a few correct grammatical forms, depending on the "accent" or the "highlight" we intend transmit. Let's analyze a little the mentioned examples. FORMS A: According to Article 7 of the Federal Law No 57 ... Pursuant to Clause 5.2 of the Contract No 33 ... Both forms above are correct. The definite article is missing before "Article 7" and "Clause 5.2" because they are equivalent-nouns working as "proper nouns"--using the proper capitalization helps us identifying them as such. Further, the article "the" ahead of the equivalent-nouns "Federal Law No 57" and "Contract No 33" is used in this particular instance to "highlight" or to "stress" the importance of these two nouns--if that was the true intention of the author. However, we could also use the following forms. FORMS B: According to Article 7 of Federal Law No 57 ... Pursuant to Clause 5.2 of Contract No 33 ... Since the equivalent-noun constructions "Federal Law No 57" and "Contract No 33" work as proper nouns--this is clearly marked by capitalization--they do not need to be additionally determined by the definite article "the". In this instance, however, the previously mentioned "accent/stress" or the "highlight" are both missing. Now, because English grammar is not restrictive, we can easily express the same messages using other correct forms of expression. FORMS C: According to Federal Law No 57, Article 7, ... Pursuant to Contract No 33, Clause 5.2, ... (or) FORMS D: According to the Federal Law No 57, Article 7, ... (with some accent/highlight added) Pursuant to the Contract No 33, Clause 5.2, ... (with some accent/highlight added) The "meaning" and the "accent" in English grammar are extremely delicate topics because many times our messages take/have elliptic/implicit forms. Consider the following. FORMS E: According to the mentioned Federal Law No 57, Article 7, ... (with explicit accent/highlight added) Pursuant to the previously mentioned Contract No 33, Clause 5.2, ... (with explicit accent/highlight added) This kind of subtle aspects, plus many other interesting aspects, are nicely presented in Logically Structured English Grammar. |
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