Definiteness, plurality, and genericity
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Mollymooly's comment on yesterday's post ("The Donald's THE, again") deserves general attention:
1. A leopard is bigger than a cheetah, though both have spots.
2. The leopard is bigger than the cheetah, though both have spots.
3. Leopards are bigger than cheetahs, though both have spots.
4. The leopards are bigger than the cheetahs, though both have spots.
5. Your leopard is bigger than your cheetah, though both have spots.
6. Your leopards are bigger than your cheetahs, though both have spots.
For me at least, 1 and 3 are generic; 2 can be either generic or specific; ditto 5 and 6 (though generic is very informal); but 4 must be specific. There seem to be restrictions on when "the + plural-noun" can be generic: are these restrictions syntactic, semantic, pragmatic?
From the other side of the Atlantic, I agree with her judgments. Does the intuited specificity of 4 help us understand what's odd about Donald Trump's use of "the women", "the gays", etc.?
There are several literatures (from philosophy of language as well as linguistics) that converge here, and perhaps someone who knows them better than I do can summarize.
One comment: this is an area where there are subtle differences even among those languages that have categories approximately corresponding to English plurality and English definite or indefinite determiners. The Romance languages are clearly different from English here, but are they all the same among themselves? What about Germanic languages?
Cindy Hauert said,
October 11, 2016 @ 6:18 am
Swiss German speakers often refer to friends and family members using "der" for males and "die" for females, so someone might refer to me as "die Cindy." It seems to be only in cases where the person is being spoken of fondly or familiarly. I believe some British dialects do the same or something similar (our Paulie, etc.) though perhaps this is dying out. ?
However, this usage would not appear to be what "The" Donald is doing when he refers to women or gays!
[(myl) The often-encountered definite article in front of Donald Trump's first name is an imitation of the usage of his former wife Ivana, as explained in a story by Amy Argetsinger "Why does everyone call Donald Trump ‘The Donald’? It’s an interesting story", WaPo 9/1/2015:
“As most people know, English isn’t my first language, in fact it’s my fourth,” the former Mrs. Trump wrote in a text message. (She was traveling and unavailable to speak on the phone, her assistant said.) “When I came to live in New York, I really had to learn the language from the beginning almost. Some things come easily, some things don’t. And for whatever reason, probably because I was going at my usual turbo speed, I started putting ‘The’ in front of most people’s names."
Ivana Trump's first language was Czech, I believe — according to Wikipedia, "Ivana Zelníčková was born in the Moravian town of Zlín (before known as Gottwaldov), Czechoslovakia, the daughter of Miloš Zelníček and Marie Francová". Since Czech is a proper Slavic language with no articles, she must have gotten the idea of "the NAME" from her second or third language. At a guess, maybe from Moravian German?
In any case, this issue (definite article with proper (given) names or not?) has no obvious connection with the nexus of plurality, definiteness and genericity raised in this post.]
Coby Lubliner said,
October 11, 2016 @ 7:33 am
It's unlikely that "Moravian German" had much to do with Ivana Trump's language habits. There are hardly any ethnic Germans left anywhere in Czechia since the end of World War II, and in any case Zlín is quite far from the borderlands where the Sudetendeutsche lived; it doesn't even have a German name distinct from the Czech one (it's just Zlin without the acute accent). Ivana may have learned German at school, but that would have been standard German, and putting a definite article before a name is strictly colloquial. My guess is that she was simply confused about where to put articles.
Incidentally, both Ivana and Ivanka, being Czech names, should be stressed on the first syllable. Does anyone do that?
Ralph Hickok said,
October 11, 2016 @ 7:50 am
What bothers me about all six examples is that the "though" is out of place :)
Mr Punch said,
October 11, 2016 @ 7:53 am
I also agree with Mollymooly's judgments. Therefore, I initially thought criticism of Trump's use of "the gays" was misguided, because I heard it as a specific reference to gay people in Saudi Arabia. I still believe it probably was so intended in that instance, but his persistence in the usage does validate the thrust of the criticism.
Mark Meckes said,
October 11, 2016 @ 8:16 am
The use of definite articles with personal names reported by Cindy Hauert in Swiss German is also common in Bavarian German. I've also heard it in colloquial Standard German, though maybe only from Bavarian speakers, so I don't know how widespread it is. I'm not sure that Bavarian restricts the practice to speaking fondly, although I think one would only do it when referring to someone with whom one could duzen (address with informal second-person pronouns).
I also, from the west side of the Atlantic, agree with Mollymooly's judgements. For my, 5 and 6 in the generic sense sound not only very informal but vaguely English — though I suspect that's at least partly because of a Fry & Laurie sketch I'm thinking of.
David L said,
October 11, 2016 @ 9:04 am
Number 1 is most puzzling to me. I suppose the most natural interpretation is that it means "A [typical] leopard is bigger than a [typical] cheetah" — but it doesn't strike me as an idiomatic statement in English. If someone said it to me I might be inclined to ask "which leopard is bigger than which cheetah?"
As for pronouns for names, I remember coming across a bit of dialogue somewhere in DH Lawrence where a child says to her mother something like "what's for dinner, our mam?" I can easily imagine that being said in my paternal grandparents' house in Derbyshire, but I don't know if it's still current.
Bill Taylor said,
October 11, 2016 @ 9:18 am
@David L — interesting. For me number 1 is completely idiomatic, with the meaning you suppose. I hear it as a bit informal: I can't picture a scientist writing it, but it sounds fine to me for everyday speech. Is this maybe a U.S. vs. U.K. difference? [My linguistic background: first language English, raised in Connecticut by U.S. native parents]
Terry Hunt said,
October 11, 2016 @ 9:21 am
@ Mark Meckes:
As an aging compatriot of Messrs Fry and Laurie, I can confirm that the constructions "your X(s)" are a characteristically lower class/lesser educated and/or informal register usage in a variety of BrE dialects. It's almost never seen in written text (other than when quoting), and in speech would now increasingly be used only ironically or humorously.
From dim recollections, one could hear it in old ('60s–'70s) sitcoms with working class settings such as Till Death Us Do Part and The Liver Birds (both scripted by writers – Johnny Speight and Carla Lane respectively – with an acute ear for register and dialect). I'd guess that in former decades and centuries it was also more prevalent in higher social circles – one thinks of the archetypal retired colonel remarking "Tricky cove, yer Johnny Zulu."
Bastian said,
October 11, 2016 @ 11:07 am
The use of the definite article with personal names is something I hear often (and sometimes use myself) in the 'Standard' German of western/notherwestern Germany (NRW). It's also pretty common in colloquial mainland iberian Spanish.
MattinTX said,
October 11, 2016 @ 11:31 am
"The Romance languages are clearly different from English here, but are they all the same among themselves?"
Just looking at Wikipedia, many Romances languages seem to allow the plural noun + definite article formulation in a generic way that would sound strange in English. For example, here's a quote from the Spanish article about leopards: "Los leopardos cazan preferentemente por la noche" ([The] leopards preferably hunt at night). I found similar constructions in the leopard articles in Italian, French, Galician, Portuguese and possibly Catalan ("Els lleopards són un animal freqüent a l'heràldica") and Romanian ("Leoparzii sunt nişte căţărători excelenţi").
By the way, to my (non-native) ears, putting the definite article before a name has a somewhat tongue-in-cheek, dismissive, sound in Spanish. I could be way off, though.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 11, 2016 @ 12:04 pm
To David L's point, I don't have a problem with interpreting 1 (singulars with indefinite articles) generically, but maybe it's more suitable in certain contexts/registers? For example, when speaking to a toddler one might well say "a cow goes 'moo' but a pig goes 'oink,'" without setting oneself up for questions about exactly which individual cow or pig was being described. Or, if you were talking with other adults about repairing cars, you might well say "Replacing the transmission on a Chevy is a less complicated job than doing it on a Subaru" (or maybe vice versa … I'm not claiming this particular example is empirically accurate).
J.W. Brewer said,
October 11, 2016 @ 12:13 pm
One broader problem with these examples, however, is that we generally don't have any social taboo about making sweeping essentialist statements about the differences between X's and Y's when they are different species (or different breeds within the same species) of non-human animals. But when you use the same syntactic structures to describe differences between human ethnic/racial/etc groups, you may get a different reaction.
Bart said,
October 11, 2016 @ 12:36 pm
The use of the definite article with personal names is pretty widespread in the German-speaking area. There's nothing very regional about it.
It doesn't have to be a fond reference. You might use it when referring to some politician you despise.
David L said,
October 11, 2016 @ 12:37 pm
@Bill Taylor; @JWBrewer: I don't have any useful explanation for why #1 strikes me as a little awkward. I think I would be more inclined to say "cows go moo, pigs go oink" but the second example, with Chevys and Subarus, seems perfectly natural to me. Maybe because we all know that Chevys and Subarus come in many different forms, so "a Chevy" clearly means "any of the vehicles with the brand name Chevy."
Reinhold {Rey} Aman said,
October 11, 2016 @ 12:46 pm
@ Cindy Hauert (and others):
Swiss German speakers often refer to friends and family members using "der" for males and "die" for females, so someone might refer to me as "die Cindy." It seems to be only in cases where the person is being spoken of fondly or familiarly.
No. Using the definite article (der and die) before names is standard in Southern German (Swabia, Bavaria, Austria, Swiss German). The definite article is used when speaking about anyone, not just friends and family members and not just when spoken of fondly or familiarly:
* Der Hans ist jung.
* Der Meier ist alt.
* Der Meier Hans ist arm. (Surname always first.)
* Die Maria ist jung.
* Die Meierin ist alt. (= Mrs. Meier)
* Der Huber Fritz und der Bauer Karl sind dumme Kerle.
* Der Meier und die Meierin sind freche Leute. (= Mr. and Mrs. Meier)
prase said,
October 11, 2016 @ 1:33 pm
Since Czech is a proper Slavic language with no articles …
That holds for literary Czech, but the colloquial variant has definite articles, even if Czechs mostly do not recognise them as such, as we are taught in school that these words are demonstrative pronouns (which they were historically). The use of these articles before proper names is restricted, though. One can say e.g.
Slyšels, že ten Trump byl zvolen? 'Have you heard that *the Trump was elected?'
but that would indicate that although the listener is expected to know about Trump (hence definiteness), they have to be reminded that they know, as if one is speaking about an acquaintance half forgotten. Or it may happen that the speaker is trying to signal his own limited familiarity with the subject. But when the subject person is well known to both sides of the discussion, the subject's name is always anarthrous.
AB said,
October 11, 2016 @ 2:16 pm
There is a famous satirical skit from the swedish tv show "Grotesco" in which a conservative TV chat-show audience blame every conceivable social problem on homosexuality, breaking into a song with the refrain "det är bögarnas fel" – "It's the [sic] gays' fault". I'm not native speaker, but I assumed that part of the joke was that the plural definite article has the same prejudiced and out-of-touch feel here as in english.
(The clip is on youtube.)
Nick Barnes said,
October 11, 2016 @ 3:06 pm
The issue many BritEng speakers would have is with "gays", which isn't a sense that really exists in contemporary BritEng: "gay" is an adjective, not a noun (certainly not one that can be pluralised). For example I can't imagine a BritEng speaker saying "He's a gay." In this it's very different from "queer" (still mostly an abusive term despite some attempts at rehabilitation) which is often found (in abusive and derogatory discourse) as singular or plural noun (or adjective).
oulenz said,
October 11, 2016 @ 3:25 pm
@Reinhold {Rey} Aman: As Bart pointed out, not just _southern_ German. It's really very standard (though conversational). I wouldn't be surprised at all if Ivana generalised this from German.
AntC said,
October 11, 2016 @ 3:41 pm
@Nick Barnes For example I can't imagine a BritEng speaker saying "He's a gay."
This BrEng speaker can imagine himself saying that, and using "gay" as a noun. I'd agree the word is more commonly used as an adjective.
Y said,
October 11, 2016 @ 3:42 pm
To peel apart 1, 2, and 3, consider:
1. *Among leopards, a male is larger than a female.
2. Among leopards, the male is larger than the female.
3. Among leopards, males are larger than females.
To me 1 is unclear and unacceptable. The others are both acceptable, with 2 more textbook-pedantic, 3 more casual.
oulenz said,
October 11, 2016 @ 3:45 pm
@Mark Liberman: _The Romance languages_ – I can't help but wonder whether you consciously opted for the definite article here. I believe the crucial difference with respect to cheetahs and leopards is that it is felicitous here to conceptualise _the Romance languages_ as the individual languages. It seems to me that including the definite article corresponds to an inductive statement (about Romance languages or cheetahs or leopards), whereas omitting it corresponds to a deductive statement (i.e. stemming necessarily from the quality of being Romance or cheetah or leopard).
AntC said,
October 11, 2016 @ 3:45 pm
@David L "what's for dinner, our mam?" I can easily imagine that being said in my paternal grandparents' house in Derbyshire, but I don't know if it's still current.
Yes, "our Peter" is still current (at least in Yorkshire) for a close family member.
peterv said,
October 11, 2016 @ 4:52 pm
There is an additional case if one of the nouns has a meaning that describes a category of instances, for example:
1. A dog is friends with a man.
2. The dog is friends with the man.
etc
7. The Dog is friends with Man.
Articulating comprehensive guidelines for assigning or not assigning articles in English strikes me as very challenging. Has anyone tried?
Jamie said,
October 11, 2016 @ 4:53 pm
@Nick Barnes: Don't forget Little Britain's "The only gay in the village" sketches.
@oulenz: Nice insight!
peterv said,
October 11, 2016 @ 4:55 pm
In particular, what guideline would suggest that, in #7, Dog should receive a definite article while Man does not?
Jerry Friedman said,
October 11, 2016 @ 5:05 pm
Bill Taylor: @David L — interesting. For me number 1 is completely idiomatic, with the meaning you suppose. I hear it as a bit informal: I can't picture a scientist writing it, but it sounds fine to me for everyday speech. Is this maybe a U.S. vs. U.K. difference?
Results for "a [noun] is [comparative adjective] than a"
COCA: 25 in 520 million words
British National Corpus: 10 in 100 million words
Not much in the way of statistics, and I haven't checked that they're all relevant, but maybe it's more common in Britain.
peterv said,
October 11, 2016 @ 5:07 pm
I had always understood "The Donald" to be a nickname, like "The Gipper" used for Ronald Reagan.
Michael Watts said,
October 11, 2016 @ 6:19 pm
I'd really like to see more investigation of why "the women" is not idiomatic, while "the ladies" is. The naive analysis would say "certain generic terms are arthrous, and the rest aren't, for the same reason that certain proper nouns (the Sistine Chapel, the Hague, the Czech Republic) are arthrous and the rest (Chatsworth House, Athens, Slovakia) aren't".
It's true that generic "the ladies" is generally used, according to my intuition, in the particular context of considering them as romantic partners. Does that matter? Why do we think there's more to this than "Donald Trump is using language that doesn't conform to the standard"?
JPL said,
October 12, 2016 @ 3:38 am
In any political system in which traditional religious conservatism dominates, the gays are more persecuted than the women, though both are oppressed to some extent.
Is this a counterexample to mollymooly's observation about her no.4 example? The reference is not just to this particular group of gays or women in this system, but to any group of gays or women in any system. The definite article is licensed by previous mentions in the discourse, and the intention is to make reference to an open-ended set of possible referents. A necessary condition for recognizing generic reference is that the object referred to is an open-ended set. The basic individual description would be something like, "In this system gays are more persecuted than women." This observation is iterated and finally covered by an inclusive general principle applying to all of the possible cases.
Johan P said,
October 12, 2016 @ 3:48 am
To answer the original question (I love that these threads get so tangenty, though):
Yes, at least for my own native language, Swedish, the same pattern in 1-4 holds.
(5 and 6 are a different matter, not least because "your" is translated as three different words in Swedish depending on context. None of them can be used as a marker of generality in the way they can in colloquial English, though.)
Johan P said,
October 12, 2016 @ 3:53 am
Oh, and what about these constructions, in the same vein?
7. That leopard is bigger than that cheetah, though both have spots.
8. Those leopards are bigger than those cheetahs, though both have spots.
9. This leopard is bigger than this cheetah, though both have spots.
10. These leopards are bigger than these cheetahs, though both have spots.
In my instinct, 7, 9 and 10 are specific, but 8 can be either generic or specific.
Michael Watts said,
October 12, 2016 @ 5:31 am
I can get a generic meaning out of this:
The scare quotes matter — the idea here is that I'm already familiar with the concept of cheetahs, but not leopards.
All of 7/8/9/10 seem obligately specific, though. Is there some special generic use of "those" (well, a plural distal demonstrative) in Swedish?
Andreas Johansson said,
October 12, 2016 @ 5:53 am
@AB:
Re bögarnas fel, I don't think the use of the article means anything there. Anarthrous det är bögars fel is unidiomatic, you'd have to reformulate to get rid of formal definiteness.
Gunnar H said,
October 12, 2016 @ 6:26 am
My intuition is that Norwegian differs on a number of these:
1. A leopard is bigger than a cheetah… (generic)
2. The leopard is bigger than the cheetah… (both?)
3. Leopards are bigger than cheetahs… (generic)
4. The leopards are bigger than the cheetahs… (both*)
5. Your leopard is bigger than your cheetah… (specific*)
6. Your leopards are bigger than your cheetahs… (specific*)
The generic "your X" construction in 5 and 6 is not available in Norwegian; the closest I can think of would be something like "our old friend the X".
I find it a little difficult to read 2 as generic in Norwegian: it would have to be in the context of some text that consistently discussed "the leopard" and "the cheetah" generically in the singular. On the other hand, I think 4 works perfectly well generically if our universe of discourse has been established in advance as "all leopards/cheetahs", and I am a little bit surprised that you all think it is disallowed in English.
As for Johan P's additions, I agree with 7, 9 and 10. For 8, "Those leopards are bigger than those cheetahs…", I would say it depends on the exact translation. "De leopardene er større enn de gepardene" is almost certainly specific, while "De der leopardene er større enn de der gepardene" (literally "those there leopards/cheetahs") could be generic, with "those there" serving as a sort of scare quotes or mild deprecation ("I guess that's what they are, I don't know and don't really care"), or to indicate that you're referring back to something your conversation partner was talking about earlier: "Those leopards [you were talking about] are bigger than those cheetahs [you were talking about]…"
Johan P said,
October 12, 2016 @ 6:57 am
@Michael Watts:
When it comes to Swedish, the construction of "de där" for "those" mirrors exactly the tone and style level very kindly explained by Gunnar H. (And in fact, to go on another tangent, wouldn't dialectal English "them there leopards" have a similar level of potential genericity?)
But I was actually thinking of English when I suggested 8 might be generic, and not obligately specific – think of a really camp voice saying "oh, those cheetahs and their silly spots". That's certainly not necessarily a specific group of cheetahs, whereas "that cheetah" definitely refers to an individual. (cf. "those crazy Americans", etc.)
Andrew (not the same one) said,
October 12, 2016 @ 7:07 am
British English has a use of 'that' rather similar to the Czech 'the' which prase mentions. It features, for instance, in the speech of the stereotypical taxi driver: 'I had that David Cameron in my cab once', etc.
Regarding 'the ladies': there used to be a custom at formal dinners (typically attended only by men) of giving a toast to 'The Ladies', which might mean a particular group – the wives, etc. of those present – but I'm not sure it also did so. In Scotland at Burns Suppers, there is a historic toast to 'The Lasses', which in my experience does tend to be read as meaning women generally.
Rodger C said,
October 12, 2016 @ 7:29 am
To me, "them there leopards" is specific, while "them leopards" is general.
philip said,
October 12, 2016 @ 8:22 am
For Irish:
1. A leopard is bigger than a cheetah, though both have spots. [generic]
2. The leopard is bigger than the cheetah, though both have spots.[specific]
3. Leopards are bigger than cheetahs, though both have spots. [generic]
4. The leopards are bigger than the cheetahs, though both have spots.[specific]
5. Your leopard is bigger than your cheetah, though both have spots. [specific]
6. Your leopards are bigger than your cheetahs, though both have spots. [specific]
As for Hiberno-English … I'm away home for the dinner; the tea has me destroyed; the Ma told me to do it.
Andrew (not the same one) said,
October 12, 2016 @ 10:12 am
Sorry, 'also' should be 'always'.
dainichi said,
October 13, 2016 @ 10:15 am
[Insert non-native speaker disclaimer here], but isn't #2 taxonomy-talk? When used for objects, say "the skyscraper is bigger than the hut", I can only read it generically when imagining a (likely jocular) setting where taxonomy is applied to buildings. There might be exceptions for certain figurative usages ("The pen is mightier than the sword"). As mentioned elsewhere, there might be an ongoing change about its usage for humans (King's "the Negro").
Jerry Friedman said,
October 13, 2016 @ 10:15 am
Okay, philip, what can "the tea has me destroyed" possibly mean?
(I want it to be an excerpt from Swift:
I would with thee, my sweet, abide—
Alas, the tea has me destroyed.
Somehow I don't think that's the right syntax, though.)
Joke Kalisvaart said,
October 13, 2016 @ 1:03 pm
For Dutch:
1. A leopard is bigger than a cheetah, though both have spots. [generic]
2. The leopard is bigger than the cheetah, though both have spots.[both, but wouldn't be my first choice for a general statement]
3. Leopards are bigger than cheetahs, though both have spots. [generic]
4. The leopards are bigger than the cheetahs, though both have spots.[specific]
5. Your leopard is bigger than your cheetah, though both have spots. [specific]
6. Your leopards are bigger than your cheetahs, though both have spots. [specific]
Jarek Weckwerth said,
October 14, 2016 @ 2:07 am
@Andrew (not the same one):
British English has a use of 'that' rather similar to the Czech 'the' which prase mentions. It features, for instance, in the speech of the stereotypical taxi driver: 'I had that David Cameron in my cab once', etc.
I wanted to comment on prase's comment then but didn't have the time ;)
Polish does the same, but I quite strongly feel that a much better English translation would be that, as you suggest. The pragmatic overtones are very similar.
The "normal" translation of Polish ten is that and I don't think it matters if it's a demonstrative pronoun or whatever you call it; it functions very much like that.
philip said,
October 14, 2016 @ 7:26 am
Hi Jerry … there is an Irish proverb – marbh le tae agus marbh gan é – which means literally – dead with tea and dead without it. 'The tea has me destroyed' expresses a similar sentiment: the speaker recognises (s)he is drinking too much tea for his/her own good. In standard English, there would not be a definite article in the phrase: tea has me destroyed – I am a martyr to tea. Hiberno-English would have martyrs to 'the tea'. This all comes from the Irish sub-stratum in Hiberno-English; Irish attaches definite articles in expressing sentences like this where 'unemployment' is meant in a general way: unemployment is a global problem now. Tá an dífhostaíocht ina fadhb dhomhanda faoi láthair. I could send you an academic paper on the subject by a professor acquaintance of mine if there is some way of you getting me your email address. Your Swift pastiche is fine … as far as syntax goes; not sure about the literary merit though – maybe ask the Nobel Committee?
ajay said,
October 21, 2016 @ 7:21 am
I can't imagine a BritEng speaker saying "He's a gay."
It's definitely informal, and possibly regionally limited (I'd say Wales and Merseyside). Someone's already cited Little Britain, and I'd add the anecdote of an acquaintance who was approached in a nightclub by an aggressive fellow soldier and asked "why are you dancing like a big gay?" His reply "Well, because I am a big gay" (which he was) did not go down well and Violence Ensued.