Re: Question on using "the" to represent whole.

From: Tron Furu (tronfuru_at_frisurf.no)
Date: 07/24/04 

Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 13:18:32 +0200

"Dae-jung Yoo" <s@m.com> skrev i melding
news:cdqc7b$b7i$1@news.kreonet.re.kr...
> A: "_The_ whale is a mammal."
> is another way to say that "Whales are mammals."
>
> B: "_The_ magpie is a mischievous bird."
> is another way to say that "Magpies are mischievous."
>
> But,
> C: "_The_ doctor is well paid."
> is not a correct way to say that "Doctors are well paid."
>
> D: "_The_ Korean enjoys singing songs at parties."
> is not a correct way to say that "Koreans enjoy singing songs at parties."
>
> Question1: Why is the article "the" in A and B acceptible?
> Question2: Why is the article "the" in C and D inappropriate?
>

I think it could be a parsing thing ....The problem is obscured by singling
out the "the", and not looking at the whole "the X".
 "The X" is a (perhaps post Frege-Russell-Wittgenstein out of fashion) way
of saying "All X" when the X in question is a genus. The name of the
specific genus is used to distinguish it from other genii (?), in a
discourse about genus.

On can also have discourses about individuals, and individuals are
habitually pointed out by giving a more specific description ("the person
who is a doctor", which is then abbreviated by leaving out "the person"
because all doctors that we normally use belong to the Homo Sapiens Sapiens
species, and only HSS are "persons"), although not invariably the individual
name, as that will often not serve to identify the individual properly.
"The doctor is in" may be more informative than "James is not at home",
although the same state of affairs is the basis for both descriptions.

And then, knowledge of which discourse you are in, is often inferred from
the situation, and this is not necessarily encoded in the very words used,
but must be extracted from other sources. So there is no difference in words
between "The whale..." and "The doctor ...".

That D is inappropriate is not a linguistic thing. In political correctness,
one is opposed to grouping people according to some criterion that singles
them out, as if they weren't sufficiently described as "people". So,
although one may think about Koreans" as "typical Koreans, different from
everybody else", and may also need to do that for specific, and sometimes
even legitimate, purposes, one needs to consider audience values before
putting it into just those words.
That is a question of rhetoric, not of grammar.

T