Usage of the indefinite article in "She has a good knowledge of..."

Question

Suggest please, what kind of indefiniteness the article "a" carries in the following sentence or, in other words, why it's used here.

"She has a good knowledge of Greek."

P.S. Could you please recommend any decent reading on the articles usage? I've already read appropriate chapters of several grammar books and a heck of articles on the Internet, but I still don't understand from time to time why an article is used in a certain case, especially with an uncountable, abstract, or plural-form noun.

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

Suggest please, what kind of indefiniteness the article "a" carries in the following sentence or, in other words, why it's used here.

"She has a good knowledge of Greek."

P.S. Could you please recommend any decent reading on the articles usage? I've already read appropriate chapters of several grammar books and a heck of articles on the Internet, but I still don't understand from time to time why an article is used in a certain case, especially with an uncountable, abstract, or plural-form noun.

Once you get past some simple guidelines, the correct use and interpretation of articles is difficult to learn, as well as difficult to teach. To quite a degree, it's pretty idiomatic. The good news, of course, is that you will usually still be understood even if your articles are not quite correct.

Here's the sense I get about your example.

The writer is thinking that there are different kinds of knowledge of Greek, and wishes to speak of a good knowledge of Greek, eg as opposed to a poor knowledge of Greek or an excellent knowledge of Greek.

However, the modifier 'of Greek' complicates things a bit.

You could also interpret the sentence this way. There are different kinds of 'good knowledge'. This person has a good knowledge of Greek but not, for example, a good knowlegde of Russian or a good knowledge of Chinese.

See, it soon starts to get a bit complicated.

Yet, by magic, we have very little trouble as listeners when this kind of thing is said in conversation.

The context, of course, is usually a big help.

eg Is this discussion only about Greek? Or are we discussing a variety of languages?

Best wishes, Clive

Victor_amelkin · Answer

Hello Clive,

Thanks for your comments. Unfortunatelly, I still haven't got it. Both "good" and "of Greek" suggest the opposite, i.e. they specify the knowledge quality and field thereby denoting some kind of definiteness. On the other hand, we cannot definitely say what exactly she knows about Greek suggesting indefiniteness. Nevertheless, I still don't understand what "a" is doing here. The only my guess is to replace "a knowledge" with "a piece of knowledge" (not sure whether it's legal) in order to quantify "knowledge", so that the usage of "a" starts making sense. But still in the original sentence I wouldn't use any article at all...

Mr Wordy · Answer

There seem to be two questions here: (i) why is an article used at all? (ii) given that an article is used, why is it "a" and not "the"?

As far as first question is concerned, I don't detect any difference in meaning between "She has a good knowledge of Greek" and "She has good knowledge of Greek", and I can't immediately think of a circumstance where one could be used but not the other. The former comes slightly more naturally to me though.

As far as the second question is concerned, the usage seems to follow the standard pattern:

"She has a good knowledge of Greek."

"She has a red dress."

"I saw a blue car."

The things are being introduced for the first time, so we use "a".

Victor_amelkin · Answer

A citation from the book I took this example from:

"The effect of a is to individuate a subamount of knowledge, her knowledge of Greek, but this individuation doesn't yield an entity conceptualized as belonging to a class of entities of the same kind: *Jill has an excelent knowledge of Greek and Liz has another; *They both have excellent knowledges of Greek." ("The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" by Huddleston and Pullum)

The italisized sentences marked with an asterisk are deliberately writen wrong.

Avangi · Answer

This citation is very wise, but doesn't seem to solve the problem. The usage just seems to be idiomatic.

Another one: "She has a healthy respect for lightning." I'm sure you would prefer to omit the article. I really can't explain it.

Ivanhr · Answer

Uncountable nouns, when modified by an adjective, can usually work in this way. Sometimes they don't even have to be modified to take an 'a'. But also note that quite often they will take no article regardless of being modified (by an adjective/another noun).

Examples
Do you hear absolute silence? (silence is modified by 'absolute' and yet I wouldn't use an 'a' here because the focus is on the concept/phenomenon of absolute silence rather than an instance of it)
They stood there in (an) absolute silence. (I'd still prefer the version without the an here if I'm merely describing the state they were in. The use of 'an' here would make the sentence more emphatic)

There is a silence that speaks volumes. (here, a silence is simply an instance of silence which is modified by the post phrase 'that speaks volumes'. You can create many different kinds of silence by following this pattern so, in a way, you make silence countable (or you make instances of silence countable rather than the word silence itself).
Quite interestingly most but not all uncountable nouns exhibit this kind of behaviour. You can't really say

She's making a good progress.(progress is not normally used in this way)

Avangi · Answer

I think Clive's suggestion of "a good knowledge" as opposed to "a poor knowledge" is tantalizing, but how do you use it to refute "Jane has a good knowledge and Mary has another one."?  There are different kinds of "countable."

Anonymous · Answer

Hello, I'm also interested in the usage of articles with uncountable abstract nouns. You said that sometimes only an instance of some of notion is meant (by the way do we use a before notion?), so can we make weather countable in the same construction?

E.g. There is such a weather that makes you feel desperate.

Usage of the indefinite article in "She has a good knowledge of..."

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