Article usage in 'The stock cars are the ordinary cars...'

Question

My question is about the usage of articles in the following which I feel all of these are correct?

1) Stock cars are ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines.

2) The stock cars are ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines.

3) Stock cars are the ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines.

4) The stock cars are the ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

BulbulTadaMy question is about the usage of articles in the following, which I feel ~~all of these are correct?~~ are all correct. Are they?

BulbulTada1) Stock cars are ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines.

This is a generic statement about stock cars. A definition, in a way.

If it's a stock car, then it's an ordinary car fitted with a very powerful engine.

The references are to any stock car and to any ordinary car and to any very powerful engine. any ~ it doesn't matter which.

BulbulTada2) The stock cars are ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines.

As soon as you add 'the', you are making a claim that these are a group of stock cars which is already known, possibly because you've been talking about them previously. 'the' is related to 'which', thus distinguishing one set of things from another.

— There are some stock cars here, and some race cars too.
— Which ones are ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines?
— The stock cars.

By the process of deduction, the final line here says "The stock cars, but not the other cars (the race cars in this context), are ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines".

BulbulTada3) Stock cars are the ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines.
4) The stock cars are the ordinary cars fitted with very powerful engines.

These are equivalent to 1) and 2) but with 'the' before 'ordinary cars'. That means that the writer is talking about a certain set of ordinary cars which have been previously defined or mentioned. (In the case of sentence 3 this removes the generic quality of the statement.)

Personally, I don't see a scenario that is easy to set up in which 3) or 4) would be very useful. They're not grammatically wrong, but there are few opportunities to use them because they require so much special context to make sense of them.

CJ

Article usage in 'The stock cars are the ordinary cars...'

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