I was reading with an ESL student today and we came upon the passage below.
The student promptly asked me if the article usage was correct, but she didn’t specify which article. I quickly scanned the selection and nothing “wrong” jumped out at me, so I had to ask which article she was referring to. She called my attention to the noun phrase in blue:
*According to Islamic teachings, one night in 610, while Muhammad was deep in meditation, the voice of the angel Gabriel called out, “Recite!” The voice repeated the proclamation twice more.
A frightened Muhammad replied, “What shall I recite?” The angel responded, “In the name of thy Lord the Creator, who created mankind from a clot of blood, recite!”*
I thought about it for a moment and told her that we often put an article before proper nouns or proper noun phrases that are unique (The Mona Lisa). But this was the indefinite article, and I could come up with no good reason for its presence aside from it being a literary style choice of the author, who could just as easily have written “Frightened, Muhammad replied…”, or “Muhammad, frightened, replied…”
What’s a good way to explain/describe this exceptional use of the indefinite article?
But in the future, I suggest that you not be such a Doubting Thomas when it comes to your linguistic skills. And stop complaining because it make you sound like such a Karen! As a certain Jim Jones once said, “Just drink the Kool-Aid and stop asking so many questions.”
I feel this is the relevant usage. The use of an indefinite article can indicate that the subject is showing an attribute which is not a permanent part of their nature. Referring to “a frightened Muhammad” indicates that Muhammad had other aspects in which he was not frightened. It’s a way of distinguishing between Muhammad being afraid at that particular moment and Muhammad being generally afraid.
It’s related to the distinction between a and the. Compare a cat and the cat, for example. Both refer to a single cat. But saying a cat recognizes that this particular cat is just one cat out of many. While saying the cat implies that there is something unique about this particular cat.
The narrative first refers to “a frightened Mohammed,” which both specifies which “version” of Mohammed is involved and highlights the terror one might feel when directly addressed by a cranky archangel. It also emphasizes that the indefinite-article person is hapless and/or lacks agency[sup]1[/sup].
If we then switch to the definite article, it’s because we’re all on the same page about the context, and we’re referring to “the” Mohammad (or Jack) who exists in that context. In fact, the switch is required. If you’ve already mentioned “a terrified Jack,” you’re now obligated to refer to that Jack with a definite article. Otherwise, it sounds like you’re talking about a different Jack:
“A terrified Jack ran for the hills. He had to get away, but it wasn’t easy. A rushing Jack lost his footing” is not quite English.
So yeah: in this idiom, the article is initially indefinite, but then switches to the definite article. That’s how this idiom works in English—at least, that’s how I see it.
So the English idiom seems to require the indefinite article for the first reference and the definite article after that. I don’t see how the second case leaves out the given example. Have I misunderstood?
[sup]1[/sup] It could also imply a contrary-to-expectation reaction: “A collegial Isaac Newton embraced Leibniz, his peer and rival, conceding that Newton’s calculus of infinitesimals was mathematically interchangeable with Leibniz’ differential calculus.”
“Terrified Jack” and “rushing Jack” aren’t two different versions of the same person. It’s the same Jack, and it’s describing his state of mind and the action he’s taking immediately. It’s not like “Young Jack” and “old Jack”—they don’t exist in proximity; they are separated by a significant stretch of time.
Never mind the explanations. It is a standard phrase. Ours not to reason why. the grammar of a language is full of rules that we have internalized and cannot explain. The use of articles is an especial trap. I recall reading a student handbook that was full of phrases like “L`étudiant(e) …” where we would say “A student …”. Why? That’s just the way it is.
This is quite true. But even so, it is helpful - even for native speakers and especially for an ESL student - to understand the slight nuances between the different phrases.
I agree. To use the example I gave above, there’s a difference in meaning between me saying “I accidentally stepped on a cat’s tail yesterday” and “I accidentally stepped on the cat’s tail yesterday”. In both cases, I only stepped on one cat’s tail and in both cases it was a particular cat (the one I stepped on). But by identifying the second one as “the cat” instead of “a cat”, I’m implying it has some specific identity beyond just being a random cat (presumably it’s my cat).
The “rule” in this case is that in the indefinite article, you’re referring to a subject/object that is not previously known; the article the suggests that everyone involved in the conversation (or reader) now has a referent and knows the object/subject in question.
Tip: articles are extremely difficult to teach because the rules are complicated. Consider the names of Universities: Louisiana State University vs. The Ohio State University. This has nothing to do with grammar; it’s simply in the name.
By a remarkable coincidence, I happen to know the name of the lexicographer who is credited with discovering this specific sense of “a” and recording it in a dictionary for the first time. Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam-Webster happened to be a guest on the “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone” podcast recently, and co-host Adam Felber read this passage from this New Yorker article about lexicographers.
IIRC, Brewster said she has been with M-W for about 20 years, and that this happened relatively early in her career, in the early 2000s.
(Unfortunately, the M-W website does not include that sense of the word in its free online dictionary.)
I think the student understands the reason for switching the article based on whether or not the noun is known or unknown. Regard:
I have a Toyota, a Honda and a Ford. The Toyota is blue, the Honda is green and the Ford is white.
In the first sentence, the listener does not know I own these three particular cars. By the time we get to the second sentence, the listener knows of the existence of the cars and my ownership of them, so we change to the definite article.
However in the selection I cited, Muhammad had been previously mentioned several times; in fact the entire article is about him so it didn’t seem right to classify him as an unknown. I will write-up “A frightened Muhammad” as equivalent to “A blue Toyota” - in other words a thing that can exist after a variety of different modifiers and thus there can exist many different “kinds” of Muhammad in a literary sense.
Young learners crave explanations. Imagine saying “Never mind the explanation” to a student trying to comprehend the Pythagorean theorem. :dubious:
Perhaps you meant that some construction is conventional and - shrug - can’t easily be defined by a clear-cut rule or pattern. But in this case, I felt there is one and just couldn’t put it into words.
Or, perhaps we should say, since this whole thread is about OP’s student:
The student’s native language may be relevant.
Some languages don’t even have an indefinite article. Hebrew, for example, does not. I believe Russian does not.
If the ESL student is coming from a language that lacks the indefinite article, it could seem abstract to the student to begin with, let alone trying to grok all the nuances.
[ol]
[li]Yes, that’s all there is to it, (though it’s silly to say she “discovered” it. She was just the first person to include it in a dictionary. [/li]
[li]All the talk here in this thread of contrasting it with the definite article the is completely off topic. This particular usage has nothing to do with that distinction. It’s not representational.[/li]
[li]Just to say, “Never mind the explanation” is a cop out. There’s a reason we do this-- it has a function, and it’s easily explained by the Emily Brewster quote. No need to cop out.[/li][/ol]
The student is a 12 year-old chinese girl that I have been teaching since she was 8. She has obviously grown up around native English speakers because she has no detectable accent and speaks English as if second nature. If she were magically transported to an American city, she could easily pass as having been born & raised there.
I think this is a question that any 12 year old might wonder about, regardless of what their L1 and L2 are. I remember being a middle-schooler in Maryland in 1976, and scratching my head at the barrage of rules (each with its long list of exceptions) thrown at my by countless grammar teachers. I might have had this very question back then.
Right. In general, while a learner’s L1 will obviously influence his or her perception of L2 grammar, that shouldn’t really matter in how you explain it. If you know how to do your job, you know how to explain it regardless of the L1.
And really, you can explain things like this without presenting them as “rules.” You can just describe how they function.
In ordinary speech, no one calls it “The Ohio State University.” This is an issue that can be safely ignored. There’s effectively no rule here to teach.
