Timeline for Usage of an article in front of the structure "adjective + non countable noun."
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 12, 2016 at 9:15 | comment | added | Kris | The use of the article signifies reference to a specific case, while the zero-article version refers to the generic entity. They're not the same. HTH. Also @DanBron I think the speaker meant the second, instead. | |
| Jun 16, 2015 at 20:14 | answer | added | WBT | timeline score: -1 | |
| May 17, 2015 at 19:10 | answer | added | Sankarane | timeline score: -1 | |
| S May 7, 2015 at 3:01 | history | suggested | Lucky | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Formatting, grammar
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| May 7, 2015 at 2:57 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 7, 2015 at 3:01 | |||||
| May 7, 2015 at 2:44 | comment | added | Dan Bron | The cognitive dissonance your are experiencing is due to the fact that construction is both a mass noun and a count noun. "A construction" is a thing which has been constructed, similar to "a construct". In your 2nd sentence, the accident was caused by some thing which was constructed (shoddily), but the accident did not occur to that construction: it occurred to some other thing. Now, I can imagine possible scenarios where that 2nd formulation is valid and descriptive, but given the linguistic evidence (shoddy) the first sentence is overwhelmingly more likely to be true. | |
| May 7, 2015 at 2:37 | history | asked | anotherworld | CC BY-SA 3.0 |