In Nouns^x, Articles^x

Hi,Why is it correct (if it is correct) to use the phrase "a great" rather than "great"?..., but a great many students seem to think it's good to ...There are two ways to think about this.1. 'A great many' is just a standard phrase, meaning 'a lot of'. eg...

This is a function, not a part of speech. That is, there is no such thing as a part of speech called a "predicate adjective". Most of your examples are nouns functioning as adjectives within a compound noun structure. If you need to know these for a class, check with the teacher or...

Yes, it's odd way not to use "a". Indeed, "any=some" implies itself plural noun to be used. So the difference in translation some of constructions in English seems to be slightly smoothed between two meanings you mentioned above. At least it's so in my language.

You can do that too, but it is not common, it's only used sometimes for emphasis. It's easy to build odd sentences that way, so I personally prefer to avoid using it that way, as a learner. When talking about one thing, using the article "a" (or "an") is the common way...

You're absolutely right. The original sentence may have led the hobbits to go looking for others' dirty hands to wash because the author chose to omit the word "your" before "grimy hands". As I said earlier, its seems like it was poetic license in that case,...

Hmmm. I thought that a + singular countable noun was the same as zero article + plural countable noun. Why wouldn't the hobbits look around for other(s)' grimy hands and not their ones? In the original sentence, "hands" doesn't have a determiner either... Having...

Haha, you gave me a funny picture in my head. If you told Paul to wash a weary face, he would probably be looking around for someone else's weary face to wash because you can't tell him to wash his own face that way; a tells the listener that we are being generic. If you wanted him to...

Anton, You're right, it is not just poetic license. The author is making a non-count noun into a count noun by adding an article. He is being specific about this air for some reason. I think you're right on to think of it as a "chunk". I would guess he is "counting" a...

Unless you are talking about specific hands, you do not need an article of any sort. Generic plurals just don't need articles. I would guess that the author was looking for poetic writing, or else he would have probably added the pronoun "your" just as he did for "weary...

Hi, evetybody. Below is the third and so far the last question concerning LOTR: Tom Bombadil: "You shall clean grimy hads and wash your weary faces." Neither an article nor a pronoun modifies "hads". How is that possible? Thanks you very much in advance,Anton