LINGUIST List 3.929

Tue 24 Nov 1992

Disc: Articles and Names

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Ann Taylor, Re: 3.918 Articles and Names
2. Fran Karttunen, Re: 3.918 Articles and Names
3. William Dowling, Articles in place names, highway names
4. Marianna Di Paolo, articles with lake names
5. Michael Kac, Articles, place (and other) names
6. , The City and The Donald

Message 1: Re: 3.918 Articles and Names

Re: the 400 highway names in Ontario. As a long-time resident of South-western
Ontario, I agree with Ian Mackay that it's only 400 highways that can take the
definite article (or highways with names 'the QEW'). but for me the 401
absolutely must have the article while other 400 highways, may or may not. I've
always assumed this is simply because until quite recently the 401 was the only
highway (within the meaning of the act), all others so designated being little
more than back roads.

Message 2: Re: 3.918 Articles and Names

A Yucateco once asked me why English-speakers persistently say "the
Yucatan." I replied that I thought it was short for "the Yucatan
peninsula." He found it somehow patronizing, just as various contributors
to Linguist report. He thought of Yucatan as a state (one doesn't say
"the Morelos") or a region, not as a land mass defined by its coasts.

Fran Karttunen

Several comments for this thread:
On multi-language morpheme duplication, Calvin Trillin, in one of his food
books, reserves his utmost contempt for "Continental Cuisine" served at places
with names like "The La Casa de la Maison House."

Re The Yukon: One of the functions of the definite article seems to be to
communicate remoteness. I think The Yukon, The Amazon (a region, not the
river), The Arctic are constructions that exemplify this. I would say that
"the Moon" also gets its article this way, whereas "Mars", etc. are not really
perceived as places. This might help explain why a Punjabi (etc.) would
prefer "I come from Punjab."

Re Colonial interpretation: Possible, but hard to discriminate from the
remote interpretation. Also compare "The Netherlands." (etc.?)

Re The 405 (etc.): The definite article can serve as an in-group marker (this
must be a consequence of something Grice said.) If in fact there is more
than one city we might be talking about, and I say "the city," you've got to
be in my group to know what I'm talking about. Someone commented that the
definite article in this context sounded "trendy." Cf. rowers at Oxford
referring to "the race", etc.

> From: Ian MacKay <IMACKAYacadvm1.uottawa.ca>
> My experience in the American midwest (Ohio to be precise) is that you
> don't use the definite article with interstate highway numbers, though the
> the use of the "I" is variable. So (in Cincinnati) one might say "Take 75
> north for 60 miles" or "Take I 75 north for 60 miles."

Here's another bean for this pot:
In Denver, locals might take (I) 70 east for 60 miles, but in Philadelphia we
are more likely to take 95 north for an hour.

Will Dowling (willfranklin.com)

A while ago someone made the claim that the definite article is not
used with lake names. A notable exception is The Great Salt Lake (of
Utah), which is the official name. In regular conversation it is
referred to as The Lake (and, yes, I wouldn't be the least surprised
if Chicagoans referred to Lake Michigan in the same way, etc.). I
think that it is also called The Salt Lake at times. To my knowledge
it is NEVER called Salt Lake, probably because Salt Lake refers to the
city (Salt Lake City) or to the metropolitan area contained in the
Salt Lake Valley. Here are some example sentences from The Salt Lake
Tribune, Saturday, November 21, 1992 A2.

"Friday's storm buried some Salt Lake areas under 12 inches of snow."
(Caption of a picture showing traffic near the University of Utah in
Salt Lake City.)

"William Alder, meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said
an otherwise routine storm picked up energy as it passed over the
relatively warm waters of the Great Salt Lake."

Marianna Di Paolo
dipaoloanthro.utah.edu

A quick and belated note regarding the use of definite articles:

One other case I can think of where a country name which previously
involved the definite article and does no longer involves Argentina, which
was at one time (in some circles, at any rate) referred to as The
Argentine.
I
can't say that the latter ever had any negative associations -- it just
seems old fashioned (and British).

Another case of a cross-linguistic redundancy: In the late period of the
heyday of long distance railroad passenger service in the United States
the Santa Fe Railway had a train between Chicago and Los Angeles called *El
Capitan* which was commonly referred to as 'The El Capitan' (and
perhaps even more commonly, among afficionadi, as 'The El Cap').

In re the discussion regarding what place gets to call itself The City: In
outstate Minnesota the Twin Cities metropolitan area is commonly
referred to as The Cities. (P.S. to Alice Faber: No, no, no, The City is a part
 of
London. Everybody knows that!)

Two curiosities: I've noticed that historians tend to refer to what I grew
up calling The Magna Carta simply as Magna Carta. In the opposite direction,
it seems to be the practice of classicists to refer to certain Greek dramas
with names preceded by articles even where it seems inappropriate -- e.g.
*The Medea*. Always wondered about that.

Michael Kac

It's common for every big city to be called "The City" by people who
live nearby. In New York, "The City" tends to mean Manhattan, even
for people who live in the other boroughs.

An interesting historical case is Istanbul, whose name comes from
the Greek phrase "eis ten poli" ("to the city" -- first "e" is epsilon,
and second "e" is eta). That phrase tended to be pronounced "istimboli"
and with dissimilation "istamboli". So when the Turks changed the name
from Constantinople to Istanbul, they simply changed from a name with
an obvious Greek derivation to one with a nonobvious Greek derivation.

While we are talking about articles with proper names, how about
"The Donald" for Donald Trump? I have also heard "The X" with the
names of other people who are especially prominent or eccentric.

John Sowa