Job Discussion Forums

[abusalam4]

First, here are some assumptions beforehand:
1. English has a system of articles, Chinese has not.
2. Articles in their own virtue are "grammatical" words and mainly serve to indicate some notions like "unknown" or "known" of something mentioned or not mentioned according to a given speech context.
3. The definite article indicates the "known" thing already referred to in a given speech context, the indefinite article indicates an "unknown" thing not yet mentioned and newly introduced in a given speech contecxt.

A bit of too much theory? -please be patient: Here, we have some sample sentences:

(1) Yesterday, I saw a man driving in a car.
(2) The man I saw driving in the car was Frankenstein.

In these two sentences, the uinderlined noun phrase refers to one and the same entity - the man seen yesterday driving in a car. In sentence (2), you use "the" because "the man" was mentioned already in sentence (1), there being introduced for the first time and thus preceded by the indefinite article.

Now, I would claim that "the" before "man" in sentence (2) may easily be replaced by "this" or "that" (demonstrative pronouns) in English without the sentence necessarily becoming inacceptible. You could not USE "this" or "that" in a context like that given in sentence (1). Hence, "this" or "that" have at leasr as much definite reference as "the" has.

From this insight, you can develop a contrastive rule on the assumption that in Chinese, it is also impossible to use a demonstrative pronoun in cases such as sentence (1).

Here then come the fourth and fifth assumptions:
4. All languages have demonstrative pronouns but not necessarily articles.
5. Demonstrative pronouns are indicators of definite reference in languages having no articles like Chinese and only may be used in appropriate contexts where "the" would be used in English.

So, I tell student and teachers this: "If you want to write an English sentence, check silently for yourself in Chinese first, whether you could use a demonstrative pronnoun before a noun in Chinese in a given speech context (assuming that the native speaker is always right). If your anwer is YES, it is safe to use the definite article in English before a noun in this context; if your answer is NO, then use the indefinite article a/an".
This covers about 85 % of all the cases and is a rule I have made upo as the "Frankenstein rule" - nice name to remember and I can always refer to it in class when needing to remind students of this rule. I have tested it with many native speakers from Polish, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc, etc. - it mostly worked fine. If this could also be useful for you......

At the end of my small lesson on this in class, I had some students come to the blackboard and had him write this rule in Chinese characters by dictating him/her in Chinese........However, it is important to work intuitively with examples first before giving the rule at the end of a class.

Some theoretical stuff again at the end of this posting: Lannguages like English did not have articles in earlier stages of language development. Latin did not have either but all its modern descendants like French, Italian, etc. have. Historically, the definite article form(s) once developed from the demonstrative pronoun like "this" that probably always has been around; the indefinite article historically developed from the numeral "one".

Now, I must go to a restaurant.. I enjoy gou rou so much.......

[alex_ssf]

In Chinese they do have definite and indefine articles:

For example when they talk about sth indefinite they would say: one man= yi ge ren
When they talk about sth definite they use a particle which is a substitute for the English "the", thus: The man= ba zhei ge ren


Aleks

[eslstudies]

Articles are one of the great English demons for East Asian students. Throw in irregular verbs, or verb forms in general, then prepositions to complete the torture!

This is a user friendly website for students of all ages.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/

[Steppenwolf]

A good introduction to the use of English articles, thank you! However, I don't think it is good for the Chinese English learners to constantly refer back to their own language. What about the use of INDEFINITE articles or how do you want to explain to them when to use plurals?

While Latin doesn't have articles as such it does have CASES that indicate as much and even more than that. The use of articles became necessary because neither French - whose grammar massively overlaid old English grammar - nor modern English have cases any more.

I don't eat gourou!

[laura1d]

HI,

I put the below in a table (got it from the internet but don't know where) and it seems to really help my students. Maybe it will help you?

A/An:

- When �we don�t know which one� because the thing or person:
a) is one of many
b) is not unique
c) has not been mentioned before

- With JOBS only if there are many people doing a particular job

The:

- When �we know which one� because the thing or person:
a) is unique
b) has been mentioned before
c) is defined by the phrase which follows it.

- With JOBS only if it is specific to one person.

- With superlatives

- With �the last�, only if you are talking about the final one.

- When you are talking about institutions� buildings (the church, the university, etc)

- Dates

- Parts of the day (except night)

- Decades

- Centuries

- Some countries, continents, islands, states provinces, towns, and cities. For example; THE Czech Republic, THE Netherlands, THE UK, THE Arab World, THE USA.

- The names of theatres, cinemas, hotels, galleries, and museums.

- With the names of mountain ranges, rivers, seas, and canals

Nothing:

- When we talk about things in general:
a) using plural or uncountable nouns
b) with the names of people or places (there are some exceptions)

- When you are talking about institutions; for example, prison, university, church (not the building!)

- Most names of countries, continents, islands, states, provinces, towns and cities.

- When we talk about regions (North, East, West, etc)

- With most roads, streets, bridges, shops, and restaurants.

- With the names of particular mountains and lakes

Cheers,
Laura

[abusalam4]

[abusalam4]

[alex_ssf]

Hi, alex - thanks for your interesting input. Let me briefly reply:
- yige + N is something that has come in from Western languages into Chinese only recently. They never had that really in their language, and to a native speaker of Chinese it may still sound strange.
- The use of the so-called ba-construction in Chinese indeed does indicate definite reference but can only be used under certain circumstances, i.e. when somkething else follows the main verb of the sentence - a complement, for example. So its acceptable use is restricted to special conditions, it therefore does not work as a "definite reference marker2 or subsitute per se. In general, they would use a demonstrative pronoun like "zhe" or "na".

Have a great day![/quote]

OK, now I know what the uses of "ba", "zhe", "na" are, and to make it clear I was just trying to be helpful.
Besides I was referring to this ba: 把 , in case you misundestood me, and you don't need to use a complement after it, in fact the object goes after it and it is followed by the verb(which could have a complement at the end if referring to a particular action).
I guess you thought that I was talking about this ba: 吧, which is a comletely different particle, and it goes at the end of the sentence when you make a suggestion.
Now finally you could either use: 把﹐那﹐這 to present an indefinite object, but the only particular one which is actually referred to as an indefinite object in Chinese grammar is: 把; as 那﹐這 mean respectively that and this.
Thank you and take care!

And don't get angry I just know my stuff hehe

[abusalam4]

[sheeba]