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From a short story:

I showed it to him. He seized the pages with immediate pleasure, as if greeting an old friend. "Would you like to work through it? I have yearned for the chance to speak to a true geometer."

Would it be grammatical to change the article:

I showed it to him. He seized the pages with immediate pleasure, as if greeting an old friend. "Would you like to work through it? I have yearned for a chance to speak to a true geometer."

It seems to me that the second option is better. The hero yearned for any chance to speak to a true geometer, after all, not for this particular chance. But maybe I'm wrong.

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    It's an extremely fine distinction that barely means anything at all in this exact context. But if you'll give me a chance to explain, I'll just say that using the indefinite article more strongly acknowledges that there might not in fact be any such chance (the implies it does exist, even if not currently available).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 18:53
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    the chance does not refer to this specific chance. In this usage, the is referring to any real chance of meeting a geometer. So it does mean any chance here.
    – user6951
    Commented Jul 16, 2014 at 8:54

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"A" would be valid/grammatical as well, but "the" is a little bit better because the snippet of the story you've presented describes the actual chance the character is having, at that moment, "to speak a true geometer."

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  • But he says he had yearned for this even before the event. Does this mean that he yearned exactly for this chance, not just for any chance?
    – CowperKettle
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 18:12
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    Like I said in my original post, they're both grammatical and get the same main idea across. To echo what FumbleFingers said, there is a fine distinction, and frankly, it doesn't matter that much in this context. If I had to choose, though, I'd still pick the one with "the" because it sounds better to me.
    – Obfuskater
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 18:43

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