Timeline for Why does the definite article appear before the mass noun 'phloem' in this passage?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 13, 2023 at 10:06 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @gotube: We refer to article-less liver when we're thinking of turning it into pate, or cooking liver and onions. But if I refer to the heart I'm not necessarily thinking any particular person's heart - I might not even be thinking about human hearts (or even mammal hearts; fish have hearts! :) The difference is substance or "organ", not substance in general or that substance in the body of some context-specific "organism". | |
| Jun 13, 2023 at 6:25 | history | edited | Richard Winters | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Adding information to the question that the author mentioned in the comments.
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| Jun 10, 2023 at 17:43 | comment | added | gotube♦ | When you use "the" it implies "the phloem of a plant". Without "the", it means phloem in general. There's almost no difference, so it only tells you whether the writer was thinking about the general concept of phloem, or was picturing a particular plant. | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 9:26 | comment | added | Zheng Li | @gotube Thanks. Does it mean that it is optional? Still not sure why the author, who is a native speaker, bothered to use 'the' every time in the article. | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 5:40 | comment | added | gotube♦ | For what it's worth, the Wikipedia article on phloem includes "the phloem" eight times. There's no rule against it. | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 2:12 | answer | added | FumbleFingers | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 1:45 | comment | added | Zheng Li | For example: "Lignification is a key feature of the differentiation of vessels and fibers in xylem and phloem." | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 1:43 | comment | added | Zheng Li | As this is for generic use, I don't understand why it has 'the'. Also, in many articles, this word 'phloem' appears without 'the'. So, please help here. | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 1:39 | comment | added | gotube♦ | Why do you think that mass nouns cannot have "the" before them? | |
| S Jun 10, 2023 at 1:29 | review | First questions | |||
| Jun 13, 2023 at 6:25 | |||||
| S Jun 10, 2023 at 1:29 | history | asked | Zheng Li | CC BY-SA 4.0 |