A.
Wallwork, English for Research Usage, Style, and Grammar,DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-1593-0_4, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
4.1 definite article ( the ): main usage The principle use of
the is to refer to something specific (i.e. particular cases rather than all cases. However, the distinction between general and specific is not always straightforward, as illustrated by these two examples:
a)
Male professors of physics from China who also work in the field of mathematics and how have studied in the USA, tend to … b)
The male professors of physics who also work in the field of mathematics that
Anna met at the conference are Sentence (a) seems very specific- but it isn’t. For something to be specific we have to be able answer the question which ones. Ina) we don’t know which specific professors. In the second sentence (b) the fact that Anna met them means that we are not referring to all
such professors in the world, but a very specific subset of them, i.e. the ones that Anna met at the conference.
The examples below show typical cases where the definite article must be used in English, but where it may not be used in your language.
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