ネイティブの耳にはどう聞こえるか
142 ：Naoki：
Dear La Salle-san and Punky Brewster,
I am the one who posted a question about the use of articles
several days ago. I read La Salle-san's and Punky Brewster's
responses and was meaning to post my further thought but didn't
have time to finish writing it. Sorry for the belatedness but
I want to thank both of you for your illuminating comments.
I wasn't reading this thread in the last couple of days and
the original thread where I posted my question and got your
comments seems to be gone without being archived. I read the
older thread up to the La Salle-san's posting where you made
a sarcastic comment about Brewster. So I might have missed some
postings if any of them followed after that. If they did, I
want to read their copy. I didn't save the postings I did read
either so I want their copy too. I thought La Salle-san's analysis
of Brewster's English was very interesting because I couldn't
tell whether he sounded like a real native English speaker or
not.
In any case, both La Salle-san's and Brewster's comments on
my question made fantastic sense to me. They dispelled a great
deal (though not all) of the enigma that had nagged me for quite
some time. In an experience like this, we say "目から鱗 me kara
uroko."
The following is my further thought:
La Salle-san:
> You'll notice that when they are used without an article, they often (not always) become rather "conceptual" references.
> When used with an article, they become much more concrete, almost tangible references .
Punky Brewster:
> The subject of the sentence is "the notion of mention [mental] symptom". A notion
> is not something you hold in your hand and not a concrete noun. "Observer
> and observed," in this case, is not talking about actual people but it's
> talking about a viewpoint. Substitute perspective words such as east and
> west, left and right, conservative and liberal. Whatever grammatic category
> that is, there's your pattern.
> Please stop thinking that the word psychiatrist is such-and-such type noun
> that always gets a definite article. That is where your confusion begins.
> It's how a word is used in context that determines if it gets an article or not.
So if I could paraphrase what you two are saying here, when
the writer whom I quoted wrote "a comparison between observer
and observed, psychiatrist and patient," he implied that he
is talking about "a comparison between the conceptual categories
of observer and observed, psychiatrist and patient," rather
than "a comparison between certain concrete observer and observed"
and so forth, just like so-called "uncountable abstract nouns"
(such as "love" and "peace") are used with no articles to signify
conceptual categories. Am I correct? With the same logic, could
we say that the reverse case also holds? That is, "uncountable
abstract nouns" can be used with articles when they imply concrete
instances. For example, you may say "a love we cherished" or
"a peace in the Middle East"?
What do you think of this explanation of mine?
[Continued]
I am the one who posted a question about the use of articles
several days ago. I read La Salle-san's and Punky Brewster's
responses and was meaning to post my further thought but didn't
have time to finish writing it. Sorry for the belatedness but
I want to thank both of you for your illuminating comments.
I wasn't reading this thread in the last couple of days and
the original thread where I posted my question and got your
comments seems to be gone without being archived. I read the
older thread up to the La Salle-san's posting where you made
a sarcastic comment about Brewster. So I might have missed some
postings if any of them followed after that. If they did, I
want to read their copy. I didn't save the postings I did read
either so I want their copy too. I thought La Salle-san's analysis
of Brewster's English was very interesting because I couldn't
tell whether he sounded like a real native English speaker or
not.
In any case, both La Salle-san's and Brewster's comments on
my question made fantastic sense to me. They dispelled a great
deal (though not all) of the enigma that had nagged me for quite
some time. In an experience like this, we say "目から鱗 me kara
uroko."
The following is my further thought:
La Salle-san:
> You'll notice that when they are used without an article, they often (not always) become rather "conceptual" references.
> When used with an article, they become much more concrete, almost tangible references .
Punky Brewster:
> The subject of the sentence is "the notion of mention [mental] symptom". A notion
> is not something you hold in your hand and not a concrete noun. "Observer
> and observed," in this case, is not talking about actual people but it's
> talking about a viewpoint. Substitute perspective words such as east and
> west, left and right, conservative and liberal. Whatever grammatic category
> that is, there's your pattern.
> Please stop thinking that the word psychiatrist is such-and-such type noun
> that always gets a definite article. That is where your confusion begins.
> It's how a word is used in context that determines if it gets an article or not.
So if I could paraphrase what you two are saying here, when
the writer whom I quoted wrote "a comparison between observer
and observed, psychiatrist and patient," he implied that he
is talking about "a comparison between the conceptual categories
of observer and observed, psychiatrist and patient," rather
than "a comparison between certain concrete observer and observed"
and so forth, just like so-called "uncountable abstract nouns"
(such as "love" and "peace") are used with no articles to signify
conceptual categories. Am I correct? With the same logic, could
we say that the reverse case also holds? That is, "uncountable
abstract nouns" can be used with articles when they imply concrete
instances. For example, you may say "a love we cherished" or
"a peace in the Middle East"?
What do you think of this explanation of mine?
[Continued]
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143 ：Naoki：02/05/21 14:04
[Continued]
If this is correct, I think my "hypothesis" about the omission
of articles and its "idiomatic" nature was wrong, for the issue
here is really more semantic than idiomatic, isn't it? Unlike
really idiomatic expressions such as "day by day" (by "idioms"
here I mean conventionally fixed wordings), you can say either
"observer and observed" or "the observer and the observed" depending
on what you want to mean in a specific context; For they just
mean two different things, the former being the general categories
and the latter being certain concrete instances of them. Am
I correct up to here?
Would the quoted writer be still correct, while he would change
the nuance of his sentence a little bit, if he had put articles
to his four nouns like this?: "This touches on our earlier observation
that the notion of mental symptom itself implies a comparison
between the observer and the observed, the psychiatrist and
the patient." Or would this be simply incorrect?
Do you say "the response was divided along the line between
conservative and liberal" or "... the conservative and the liberal"?
The latter sounds right to me but is it wrong?
In this light, the examples La Salle-san gave us were good food
for further thought and questions for me. The first example
is: "Fastening your seatbelt can mean the difference between
life and death." Depending on the context, can you use articles
with "life and death" too? For instance: "Fastening your seatbelt
can mean the difference not only between the life and death
of you, but also between the lives and deaths of many others"?
It's kind of like "mother and child" and "a mother and her child,"
isn't it? Expressions like "a long life" and "a miserable death"
require articles because the modifiers ("long" and "miserable")
turn the described things into their more concrete instances,
don't they? So in case you want to use these modifiers, will
the sentence be: "Fastening your seatbelt can mean the difference
between a long life and a miserable death"?
[Continued]
If this is correct, I think my "hypothesis" about the omission
of articles and its "idiomatic" nature was wrong, for the issue
here is really more semantic than idiomatic, isn't it? Unlike
really idiomatic expressions such as "day by day" (by "idioms"
here I mean conventionally fixed wordings), you can say either
"observer and observed" or "the observer and the observed" depending
on what you want to mean in a specific context; For they just
mean two different things, the former being the general categories
and the latter being certain concrete instances of them. Am
I correct up to here?
Would the quoted writer be still correct, while he would change
the nuance of his sentence a little bit, if he had put articles
to his four nouns like this?: "This touches on our earlier observation
that the notion of mental symptom itself implies a comparison
between the observer and the observed, the psychiatrist and
the patient." Or would this be simply incorrect?
Do you say "the response was divided along the line between
conservative and liberal" or "... the conservative and the liberal"?
The latter sounds right to me but is it wrong?
In this light, the examples La Salle-san gave us were good food
for further thought and questions for me. The first example
is: "Fastening your seatbelt can mean the difference between
life and death." Depending on the context, can you use articles
with "life and death" too? For instance: "Fastening your seatbelt
can mean the difference not only between the life and death
of you, but also between the lives and deaths of many others"?
It's kind of like "mother and child" and "a mother and her child,"
isn't it? Expressions like "a long life" and "a miserable death"
require articles because the modifiers ("long" and "miserable")
turn the described things into their more concrete instances,
don't they? So in case you want to use these modifiers, will
the sentence be: "Fastening your seatbelt can mean the difference
between a long life and a miserable death"?
[Continued]
144 ：Naoki：02/05/21 14:05
[Continued]
The American who told me that I should write "an image and a
text," not "image and text," was an educated woman (she is a
Ph.D. in a humanities field). So now that I heard your comments
on this, I think she corrected me because she thought that my
choice of wording was incorrect in that specific context. The
context was something like this: I was discussing about a specific
piece of journalism where the journalist used photographs with
textual captions; I was trying to describe how these two media
(photograph and text) were combined to communicate a journalistic
message. In doing so, I ventured to generalize the difference
between image and text, how their different semiotic structures
worked to communicate the message.
Now, I just wrote "I ventured to generalize the difference between
image and text" (without articles). For in this case, it seems
OK to me to use the two words without articles, while I think
I could have written "an image and a text" too. I want to hear
your opinions about this. Which do you think is better, or which
is correct and which is wrong?
I have more questions I want to ask but will stop here. I have
wrote a lot already.
P.S. Is ラサール your last name? Is it "La Salle" or "LaSalle"
or "Lasalle"?
The American who told me that I should write "an image and a
text," not "image and text," was an educated woman (she is a
Ph.D. in a humanities field). So now that I heard your comments
on this, I think she corrected me because she thought that my
choice of wording was incorrect in that specific context. The
context was something like this: I was discussing about a specific
piece of journalism where the journalist used photographs with
textual captions; I was trying to describe how these two media
(photograph and text) were combined to communicate a journalistic
message. In doing so, I ventured to generalize the difference
between image and text, how their different semiotic structures
worked to communicate the message.
Now, I just wrote "I ventured to generalize the difference between
image and text" (without articles). For in this case, it seems
OK to me to use the two words without articles, while I think
I could have written "an image and a text" too. I want to hear
your opinions about this. Which do you think is better, or which
is correct and which is wrong?
I have more questions I want to ask but will stop here. I have
wrote a lot already.
P.S. Is ラサール your last name? Is it "La Salle" or "LaSalle"
or "Lasalle"?