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Question

1. He hit a long ball to right field.2. Report back to base as soon as you see anything.3. It became a battle of wits between student and teacher.4. We could see the beams of searchlights scanning the sky.taken from Longman.Why not "the right field, the base, the student and the teacher, the searchlights"?

Brunate · Accepted Answer

We don't use the article in English as much as other countries do, and there are certain set phrases which we use which would sound abnormal to English people if you put the article in.  For example:  To go in hospital, but to go to THE library.  To go to school but to go to the shops.  No reason why, they are just things which you have to learn.  There are textbooks which will teach you when we use the article and when we don't - eg:  English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy - Cambridge University Press.  I use this with my students and it is excellent.  There are exercises and you have the key at the back to check your answers.

CalifJim · Answer

Many books can be written on the use of the in English. I don't think anyone has all the answers.

I can tell you in a somewhat impressionistic way what I think about these examples, but there will be no simple rule that emerges.

Nouns are sometimes promoted to a semi-proper noun status even though they are not capitalized. Right field (Right Field?) is a sort of name of a location within the ballpark, just as, say, Manhattan is a location within New York City. Similarly, base (Base?) is nearly a proper-noun location name.

Nouns are also used without the when they represent roles. (For two weeks she acted as secretary.) When we speak of a battle between student and teacher, we mean to focus on the kind of battle that is characteristic of the roles of student and teacher, not this battle between this student and this teacher.

Nouns are also used as adjectives. Compound nouns are formed this way. (greenhouse, garden gate, water slide) An intermediate between the adjective-noun combination and the noun-noun combination is the use of an of phrase. (box of chocolates, beams of light) The omission of the makes of searchlights almost adjectival, even though the main element is a noun. So the whole expression the beams of searchlights can be replaced by the compound noun pattern the searchlight beams. Just as we don't care/know which chocolates are in 'a box of chocolates', we don't care/know which searchlights are in 'the beams of searchlights'. (If we cared/knew, we would have said beams of the searchlights, because we use the when we care/know which. Presumably we would have mentioned some specific searchlights already before talking about the searchlights, of course.)

It's interesting to note that sometimes the omission of the makes the noun seem more specific (as in the semi-proper noun case above), and sometimes the omission of the makes the noun seem more general (as for roles or in certain of phrases.) That's just how contradictory English can sometimes be.

CJ

Diamondrg · Answer

Thank you, Jim.

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