E.g:
"Reference of the actor who is granted access" vs "The reference of the actor who is granted access"?
Should we put "The" at the beginning of the sentence?
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"Reference of the actor who is granted access" vs "The reference of the actor who is granted access"?
Should we put "The" at the beginning of the sentence?
All singular countable nouns require to be qualified by a determiner, e.g. the; a/an; any; his/her/my, etc; that; this; a genitive noun, etc.
Uncountable nouns and plural nouns may or may not be qualified by a determiner, although obviously, "a/an" cannot be used with (a) uncountable nouns (unless they have a partitive qualifier) (b) plural nouns
In this context, reference is a singular countable noun.
The noun "reference" can be treated as both countable and uncountable (look up "reference" in any online dictionary). Here's an example from a book on linguistics:
"...In other functions they are replaced by fuller forms "someone/somebody" and "anyone/anybody" for HUMAN REFERENCE, "something" and "anything" for NON-HUMAN REFERENCE".
In the above example you might use the indefinite article but don't have to. If it was "a human reference", the sentence would be just as fine. As I see it, many deverbal nouns like "reference" (which originated from the verb "to refer") can be looked at either as a process (no indefinite article) or an event (the indefinite article required).