Timeline for New Oxford American Dictionary describes "the" as an adjective
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13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 12, 2011 at 22:29 | comment | added | avpaderno | The third version of the NOAD now defines a a determiner, in the same way it defines my a determiner. | |
| Apr 12, 2011 at 21:58 | comment | added | timur | @kiamlaluno: "a" is an adjective? To use JSBangs' test on this: ! more a house, The most a house, The house is a, a and green house, red and a house. | |
| Apr 12, 2011 at 21:15 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @JSBangs: I agree that it isn't terribly useful to call articles adjectives. // The harder they beat her, the more she hated them. Isn't the an adverbial modifier here? It would be hard to supply a noun. Many other IE languages also use pronouns or articles (the line between article and pronoun is often blurred) to indicate the degree to which one thing is greater than the other with comparatives. | |
| Aug 16, 2010 at 19:46 | vote | accept | avpaderno | ||
| Aug 15, 2010 at 22:45 | comment | added | JSBձոգչ | @Vincent, the is not modifying wiser in your example sentence. It is rather the determiner for an implicit noun, i.e. "the wiser [one]." There is a productive pattern in English where the heads of noun phrases in predicates can be dropped, especially in conjunction with a comparative adjective: "Of the girls, Sue was the prettier." "We were the poorer for it." In none of these cases is the acting as an adverb; in every case it's a determiner for an implicit noun. | |
| Aug 15, 2010 at 5:51 | comment | added | Vincent McNabb | @JSBangs - It certainly is an adverb. It certainly is not a determining article in that example, there is no such thing as "a wiser". In that sense, "the" is modifying the adjective, and is therefore an adverb. | |
| Aug 15, 2010 at 4:33 | comment | added | JSBձոգչ | @Vincent, I don't think the can be an adverb. It's certainly not an adverb in the example sentence you gave. | |
| Aug 15, 2010 at 3:40 | comment | added | avpaderno | Looking at the definition given from the NOAD for determiner, I read the following description: "[Grammar] a modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group has, for example a, the, every. See also definite article, indefinite article.". | |
| Aug 15, 2010 at 3:05 | comment | added | Vincent McNabb | You may want to point that not only is it not an adjective, but it can be either an article or an adverb. E.g. "The man was none the wiser" (1st "the": article, 2nd "the": adverb) | |
| Aug 14, 2010 at 22:46 | comment | added | avpaderno | To complete the information, also "a" is reported from the New Oxford American Dictionary as adjective. | |
| Aug 14, 2010 at 22:05 | comment | added | JSBձոգչ | The and a(n) are usually called "articles" or "determiners". They're in a category of their own because there are no other words in English that have the same semantic and syntactic function. | |
| Aug 14, 2010 at 19:43 | comment | added | Chris | Great points. I guess "the" is merely a modifier? | |
| Aug 14, 2010 at 19:40 | history | answered | JSBձոգչ | CC BY-SA 2.5 |