I was thinking about some of the following sentences last night.
John went to school.
I saw my friend at the store.
You can find the information at the library.
My friend is in (the) hospital.
The drunk driver got put in jail.
Ok, so, here’s my question. Why is it that sometimes we use zero-marking (excluding the article) for general places we go (to school, to jail), and sometimes we use the definite article “the” even when we technically shouldn’t. Obviously when most of us say “I went to the store” we are talking about a generic store, and that there are actually many stores we could have been.
Basically, it seems to me that all these examples should really employ the zero-marking, but for some reason it would be really weird in English to say “I went to library the other day to research an article.”
Also, I’ve noticed that this differs from dialect to dialect. In British English, saying that “My friend is in hospital” is perfectly fine, but in American English, we would say “My friend is in the hospital.” Of course we technically mean, “My friend is in a hospital” although saying it that way doesn’t seem to imply that they are ill or injured, but that they are simply located in a hospital.
So what’s up with this? Why do some places we go use the zero-marking convention, and some require the definite article “the” even when it seems it should be inappropriate.
The difference between British and American here is mostly just with “hospital”, and the Brits are consistent with other usage. For everything except the American usage of “hospital”, we leave off the article for someone there to partake of the location’s services, and include it otherwise. For instance:
“John is at school”: John is a student and is currently in the process of being educated.
“John is at the school”: John is at a PTA meeting.
“Mary is at church”: Mary is participating in a worship service.
“Mary is at the church”: Mary is helping organize the church’s rummage sale.
“Bob is in jail”: Bob is incarcerated as a result of a crime.
“Bob is at the jail”: Bob is visiting a friend who’s incarcerated.
“Sue is in hospital” (British usage): Sue is being treated for a medical condition.
“Sue is at the hospital”: Sue is volunteering as a nurse’s aide.
Chronos, that doesn’t answer my question about why we don’t use zero marking for all of these places.
Why use “the” before store, library, etc… when we are obviously talking about how we are taking advantage of their services. Why don’t we say, “I was at store the other day…”? For example, you do hear this type of usage with the word market “he’s gone to market to pick up supplies.”
Generally, in order to drop the determiner for a count noun a couple of conditions must be met. It has to represent a common or important abstract concept for a given group of speakers and the speakers have to be interacting in a stereotypical way with it.
Ok… so why doesn’t store or library satisfy these conditions for dropping the article? We all know what you are going to do if you go to a store or to a library. We all know what a store or a library is. So why don’t we all say, “John went to store to pick up some milk.” or “Jane went to library to research an article.”?
WAG, because it hasn’t been so long since the immense majority of towns had one of each, if that many. We’re used to modern distances, speeds and densities, but language didn’t evolve under current conditions. I don’t know about the UK or the US, but in Spain there are many areas which saw daily markets in several different towns to which one could go and return within the day, but fixed, walled, roofed stores selling “a bit of everything”, whose owner meant to make a living through commerce? One, in the biggest village - or none. I live in a relatively big village which has been an administrative center since the 13th century, but I’ve heard people talk about remembering when the first store opened (early 1960s, when the advent of the tractor made it possible for farmers to move to the village and the population suddenly concentrated). Before that, there were people who made things you could buy from them, but no stores as such, and nobody who tried to make a living mainly from commerce. There are many other areas where the storekeeper was one of the town’s MVPs back in the 19th century - in the 18th, “stores” were a “city” thing.
WHAT??? This is literally insane. There is only one common thing people do when they go to a store, and only one common thing people do when they go to a library. And to assert that stores and libraries are not common or important is ridiculous on its face. I feel like you’re just trying to get a rise out of me.
@ Nava, that sounds like a good WAG to me. I like your reasoning. Perhaps the places we go where we still include “the” are examples of places where most towns and cities really only have or had one of.
And yet, your example of the most common thing to do at a library is researching an article. To me, the most common thing to do at a library is clearly check out books for reading.
And by the way, there’s no court to rule on when determiner-dropping should start. If you think go to store is sensible and appropriate, please feel free to speak so. If others agree, they’ll join in. Language is definitely a grass-roots sort of thing.
It’s pretty hopeless to try to figure out why certain grammatical patterns are used in some cases and certain other grammatical patterns are used in other cases. Language is not about satisfying precise logical conditions. Much of it is arbitrary.
We do use college that way though, in the US. “I went to college and studied physics.” Even if the college is actually part of a larger university. But the usage is similar in that we both use zero marking by dropping the article.
So why do we all say things like:
I went to the library.
I went to the store.
I went to the theater.
but we say things like:
I went to jail.
I went to college.
I went to school.
I went to market.
Some languages–Russian, for instance–don’t use articles at all, and seem to get along without them just fine.
We use them, but inconsistently. It would be equally clear where we were going if we went to store, or to the store; if at the store we bought tennis racquet, or if we bought a tennis racquet; if we bought pound of butter, or if we bought a pound of butter.
But sometimes the article makes things clearer. For example, if we go to jail–that’s pretty much the result of getting busted. But if we go to the jail–that’s our friend getting busted, not us. If we go to school, we’re attending. If we go to the school, we’re visiting, or just passing by.
We’re inconsistent! (Another example is when, for instance, the farmer slops the hogs, waters the horses, and milks the cows. Same verb construction, but one of these things means taking something away, while the others mean giving.)
We all say these things and know what we mean because we know the language. Someone learning it will probably spot tons of things like this that are invisible to native speakers unless we think about them.
Does Russian omit definite as well as indefinite articles? Or does Russian omit only the indefinite article?
Hebrew uses a definite article (on nouns and also on adjectives!) but has no indefinite article.
Spanish has very different rules about when to use articles than English. From what I can see (knowing very little Spanish), the definite article is used extensively in places where English does without.
Wait! It gets even worse! There’s this bizarre (and I think bastardized) usage that goes like this (example from a tourism commercial for Carmel, Ca.):
Sometimes the determiner is used when referring to the institution in general. For example:
Mary is at church: partaking of a service at some church somewhere
Mary is at the church: located at a particular church already referred to, or understood from context
Archbishop Smith is an important figure in the church: in the religious establishment rather than a particular church
Bill is at the theatre: located at a particular theatre
Bill is in the theatre: located in a particular theatre; or, works in the theatre industry
I understand what you all are saying about the difference betweet “went to school” and “went to the school.” The connotations between those are distinct and they have different meanings. In fact, it’s quite useful to have these.
But now, consider “store”. “I went to store and bought some milk.” No sense whatsoever. “I went to the store and bought some milk,” effectively means, “I went to a store and bought some milk.”
The point I’m making is that in these examples switching “the” and “a” makes absolutely no difference in meaning.
“I went to a store to buy some milk” = “I went to the store to buy some milk”
“I went to a library to check out a book” = “I went to the library to check out a book”
but
“I went to a school” != “I went to the school” != “I went to school.”
Some of you are saying there is just no logical reason this should be, it’s just convention or whatever. That’s fine if that’s the answer, I’m just curious to see if there’s not more to it than that.
And vice versa, you can often tell that the title of a book or movie has been translated from English because it’s got an article it doesn’t need in Spanish; often, one that’s absolutely grating.