To remove the

Question

Hi, teachers.Again on the article:Can I remove the from the phrase the philosophy of the Orient ?If I can, when do I do it?Would you please give a hand? Thank you very much.

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

Please give us a complete sentence written by a native speaker and we'll try to help you. Without a sentence, it's impossible to give detailed advice. Dropping the article in a structure which many non-native grammarins call the of-genitive is exceptional.

CB

Norwolf · Answer

I'm so sorry.

How about these:

As the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important.

In Siddhartha, many kinds of thoughts and philosophy of the Orient are mixed.

the post-1949 Mainland Chinese culture we speak of does not consist entirely of traditional political wisdom and philosophy of the Orient .

Cool Breeze · Answer

You have provided intersting examples![Y] I hope we'll get replies from natives, too, but while we wait for them, I'll give you my views.

norwolfAs the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important.

This impies to me that this particular philosophy is an indivisible entity, that no representative of the philosophy disagrees with the axiom. Another factor that increases the likelihood of the presence of the article is the fact that the philosophy of the Orient is the grammatical subject of the clause.

norwolfIn Siddhartha, many kinds of thoughts and philosophy of the Orient are mixed.

Philosophy of the Orient is no longer the subject of an active clause. Not all of the Oriental philosophy is mixed, just some parts of it. Therefore using the would be inappropriate. What is said before philosophy of the Orient supports this approach to the author's thinking. Many kinds of thoughts doesn't mean all thoughts are mixed.

norwolfthe post-1949 Mainland Chinese culture we speak of does not consist entirely of traditional political wisdom and philosophy of the Orient .

Basically the reason is more or less the same as above. The sentence implies that the post-1949 Mainland Chinese culture doesn't contain all of the philosophy of the Orient. In this case, I wouldn't consider including the article wrong, though. To my mind, this is a borderline case.

What I have said is largely based on my native language, Finnish, which is rich in inflected grammatical forms. The Finnish inflections help me figure out a reason for the inclusion or exclusion of articles in English. Even though English is not particularly expressive, nuances like those in your examples can sometimes be expressed by the absence or presence of articles.

CB

LouiseT · Answer

I am a native speaker and I agree with CoolBreeze who has explained everything very well.

One slight difference is that for the third phrase I do not find this a borderline case. I would find the sentence odd (not wrong) with the article. I am far more in favour of leaving it out than including it.

To remove the

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