Why no article here?

Hello all!

I was looking up a word in theFreeDictionary and stumbled across the following sentence from Jack London's "White Fang": «The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant between dog and man.»

Why didn't he write "...between _the_ dog...".

Thanks in advance,
Anton

EDIT: Could it be bacause "between dog and man" is descriptive (not restrictive)?

Thanks, that's interesting!

Thanks for another hint. But I am still thinking and can't fully get it (I thought I would with time...).

It's general dog-ness and general man-ness that London refers to by writing "man" and "dog" without an article. But isn't that very (wolf)dog's dog-ness and the man-ness of cerain men?

I hope I am right in thinking that London writes it that way to emphasize the covenant's being part of "the ancient covenant that the first wolf that came
in from the Wild entered into with man". Otherwise he _could_ have used the definite article, I suppose.

Anton

Jackson6612

uppose he wrote between the dog and man, then would it mean that the is associated with both dog and man, i.e ...the covenant between (the) dog and (the) man.

No, I was referring to the placement of "the" before both "dog" and "man"... I am not sure it would be correct to use "the" only before "dog".

Jackson6612

What do you mean by descriptive and restrictive?

Those are standard grammatical terms. Restrictive – something that restricts the meaning of a noun to a single specified object which otherwise would refer to a multitude or a class of objects. Descriptive – something that only describes an object, but does not specify it.

Descriptive: "This is a white car" – we know the color, and it is only a description.

Restrictive "I am the guy that wrote you that letter" – the subordinate clause here identifies the person, so it is restrictive.

CalifJim

It's the covenant between dog-nature and man-nature.  (between what-is-dog-essence and what-is-man-essence; between dog-ness and man-ness)

 

I agree. We could also say that this is in a way a matter of "opposites" in that people are human, dogs are not. It is normal in English to drop articles with opposites:

from morning till evening, from east to west

CB