Timeline for 'Cat' has a final 't'. — The letter "t" is the only one in the word "cat". Then why is it possible to use "a" here?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 16, 2023 at 16:24 | comment | added | tsc_chazz | @Loviii I cannot think of any sentence where that would be grammatically correct. | |
| Dec 16, 2023 at 12:23 | comment | added | Loviii | @tsc_chazz Could you please come up with a context for the sentence "'cat' has a last 't'" in order for me to write it down into my documents? Thanks. | |
| Dec 8, 2023 at 14:36 | comment | added | Andy Bonner | Comments are not meant for extended discussion. @Loviii, if you have a new question, please open a new one. If you want to alter the present question, do it by editing. | |
| Dec 8, 2023 at 0:22 | comment | added | MT0 | You could say "The word 'cat' has the 't' last." which would mean "The 't' in 'cat' is the last letter of the word" and the 't' refers to the definitive article that is the singular 't' out of the letters in 'cat'. You could also say "The word 'cat' has a 't' last." where the 't' is an indefinite article referring to one of the infinite letter 't's that could exist. But you would not normally talk about "the last 't'." unless you are talking about a finite set of letter 't's such as "we had letters written on cardboard but the cat has stolen the last 't'". | |
| Dec 7, 2023 at 17:04 | comment | added | Lambie | Her clothes were in tatters. The last t in that word probably would be in the last syllable of the word. | |
| Dec 7, 2023 at 17:02 | comment | added | Lambie | @Loviii We don't say "last t" here. last t would mean there are other t's. The last train to London left 20 minutes ago. That means there were trains before than. Please do not use upper case c in your example in single quote marks. You are just multiplying the error. | |
| S Dec 7, 2023 at 16:41 | history | suggested | DLosc | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Fixed typos
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| Dec 7, 2023 at 16:38 | comment | added | tsc_chazz | Using 'last' in this context makes it grammatically incorrect either way, unless you were talking about the last 't' in the sentence, and you had already refined context to indicate that it was the sentence you were talking about: "In this sentence, 'cat' has the last 't'." | |
| Dec 7, 2023 at 16:30 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Dec 7, 2023 at 16:41 | |||||
| Dec 7, 2023 at 16:28 | comment | added | Loviii | If we replaced "final" with "last", then would we use "a" too or only "the" would be correct?: 'Cat' has a/the last 't'. | |
| Dec 7, 2023 at 16:04 | history | edited | Andy Bonner | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 1028 characters in body
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| Dec 7, 2023 at 15:39 | comment | added | Barmar | OTOH: "The t in cat is its final letter." Now we're talking about a specific "t". | |
| Dec 7, 2023 at 1:51 | history | edited | Andy Bonner | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 6 characters in body
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| Dec 7, 2023 at 1:48 | comment | added | Lambie | 'cat' has the final t phoneme of bat and fat. | |
| Dec 7, 2023 at 1:48 | comment | added | Andy Bonner | I notice I just used "the house" in my example. This would assume that this example was taken from a context that had already identified a specific house. Or sometimes, at the start of a story, it's used to "jump into" the action as if it's already been explained. | |
| Dec 7, 2023 at 1:44 | history | answered | Andy Bonner | CC BY-SA 4.0 |