Exercise 8. Explain the reasons for the articles in these quotes

1. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit or There and Back Again)

2. There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine. (P. G. Wodehouse)

3.  “Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of   bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre)

4. Dress warmly, Ser Dontos had told her, and dress dark. She had no blacks, so she chose a dress of thick brown wool. The gods heard my prayer, she thought. She felt so numb and dreamy. My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel. (George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords)

5. Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. (Mark Twain)

6. How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? (Charles de Gaulle)

7. “ Porridge is meant to look like hot concrete. Read the next question!” (Hilary McKay, Indigo's Star)

8. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. (Carl Sagan, Cosmos)

9. “I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food. ” (W.C. Fields)

10. The stars were so many and so white they looked like chips of ice, hammered through the fabric of the sky. (Anthony Doerr, About Grace)

 

EXERCISE 9. Fill in the articles and explain your choice.

A. Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, "___ honey or ___condensed milk with your bread?" he was so excited that he said, "Both," and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, "But don't bother about ___ bread, please." And for a long time after that he said nothing... until at last, humming to himself in a rather sticky voice, he got up, shook Rabbit lovingly by the paw, and said that he must be going on. [by A. A. Milne]

B. Harry's mouth fell open. The dishes in front of him were now piled with __food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: ___ roast beef, ___roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, ___bacon and ___steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, ____ Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, ____gravy, ____ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs. [by J. Rowling]

 

C. It takes me half my meal to figure out ___ dough, it tastes more like Indian nan than like any pizza dough I ever tried. It’s soft and chewy and yielding, but incredibly thin. I always thought we had two choices in our lives when it came to ___ pizza crust – thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be ___ crust in this world that was thin and doughy? On top, there is ____ sweet tomato sauce that foams up all bubbly and creamy when it melts __ fresh mozzarella, and the one sprig of ___ basil in the middle of the whole deal somehow infuses the entire pizza with herbal radiance, much the same one shimmering movie star in the middle of a party brings contact high of glamour to everyone around her. It’s technically impossible to eat this thing of course. You try to take a bit off your slice and __ crust folds, and ___ hot cheese runs away like topsoil in a landslides, makes a mess of you and your surroundings, but just deal with it. [by E. Gilbert]

EXERCISE 10. Choose five of the following nouns and make three examples with each noun using the zero, the definite and the indefinite (if possible) articles.

Food	Liquids	Natural substances	Man-made substances	Other
Fruit Bread Flour Dough Batter Porridge Cereal Meat Broth Poultry Beef Lamb Mutton Chicken Fish Flesh Honey Butter Sugar Salt Pepper Mustard Cheese Wheat Corn Rice Baking soda	Water Oil Milk Tea Coffee Lemonade Juice Sap Syrup Sauce Liquor  Wine Beer Mercury Bleach Tar Blood Saliva Sweat Vinegar Alcohol Fuel Petrol Gasoline Acid Poison Polish	Silver Gold Iron Ore Copper Lead Tin Aluminum Sand Coal Marble Wood Timber Grass Hay Straw Rock Fur Skin Muscle Tissue Rubber Chalk Vapour Steam Oxygen Carbon dioxide	Plastic Glass Cloth Fabric Linen Wool Cotton Brick Steel Brass Wire Aluminum foil Concrete Cardboard Lumber Fiber Nylon Paper Silk Leather Velvet Suede Ceramic Clay China Ivory Soap	Food Grain Ash Air Fire Hair Sunlight Rain Ice Mud Dirt Snow Slush Sleet Medicine Perfume Paint Makeup Ink Glue Baggage Furniture Equipment Machinery Rubbish Litter Waste

 

 

Unit 3. Articles with abstract uncountable nouns

THE ZERO ARTICLE

I. Abstract uncountable nouns take the zero article when used in a general sense.
E.g. It was obvious that Mr. Low found marriage a very satisfactory state. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. Life and death, crime and punishment, war and peace – see the traditional dichotomies of Russian literature in the new Broadway musical.

 

II. Abstract uncountable nouns take the zero articles when the speaker nominates a phenomenon or a feeling.

e.g. Love is in the air. We could see courage and determination in Mary’s quiet eyes. You should do research before travelling to the middle of nowhere. The son had talent, and kindness, and curiosity, and gentle compassion; the father wanted him to be the shark the child could never become.

 

NB 1: Descriptive attributes may narrow the notion, but it still remains rather general. The following adjectives typically do not change the article:

1. Nationality, e.g. Russian literature, Italian opera, Chinese philosophy, Dutch education.

2. Social characteristics, e.g. racial discrimination, feudal law, religious prejudice.

3. Periods of time, e.g. modern art, ancient history, further discussion, medieval culture.

4. Being true or not, e.g. real freedom, true friendship, false argument, genuine knowledge.

5. Degree or extent, e.g. infinite power, absolute happiness, great joy, rapid progress, total war.

6. Genres or trends in art, e.g. romantic prose, dramatic criticism, detective literature.

7. Position or locality, e.g. inside information, local distribution, regional identity, global peace.

8. Manner or behavior, e.g. polite attitude, defensive behavior, unmotivated violence.

9. Continuation or repetition, e.g. constant war, uninterrupted peace, repeated anger.

 

NB 2: Some abstract nouns may be used both as countables and uncountables: e.g. difficulty – difficulties, chance – chances, talent – talents, war – wars, effort – efforts, etc. The countable noun typically means a state and the uncountable counterpart typically means a case of the same thing. In prepositional phrases we choose the uncountable noun and use the zero article: He looked at us with suspicion. You shouldn’t get angry at people without reason. He spoke with difficulty. You mustn’t leave your future life to chance. These two countries are at war.

 

THE DEFINITE ARTICLE

I. We use the definite article when the abstract idea expressed by a noun is applied to a definite situation or there is a limiting attribute. The definite article has a limiting meaning here.

E.g. In the darkness of the cave we couldn’t see her face. The unexpectedness of our decision left everybody speechless. The weather is fine. What’s the news? Did you bring the money? Is it worth the trouble?

 

NB 2: We always use the definite article with abstract substantivized adjectives. This group includes the nouns that originally come from substantivized adjectives, like: the present, the past, the future, the singular, the plural.
e.g. “I don’t believe in the supernatural,” Sir Henry said. What will the future bring to us?