Recent Comments

1. 7 days ago on Herman

   Why does the man with the checks, have a camera?

2. 8 months ago on Thatababy

   I was expecting a “find the 12 differences” puzzle. :-(

3. over 1 year ago on Thatababy

   yep!

4. over 1 year ago on The Grizzwells

   What is a “TWIN”? It is when there is more than one progeny born at the same time. How many animals in that park give birth to only one at a time? Frogs give birth to hundreds, Bears give birth to 2, 3 or 4. I won’t get into insects. Basically, our little friend is reminding him that there are very few “singles” born in the park. – Glad I could help. :-)

5. over 2 years ago on Andertoons

   Goalies? Why, they are the only ones that give you hugs!

6. over 2 years ago on Lio

   I am more concerned about the landscape in 2099 than the headline. Is this what the future world will look like after the next cycle of elections?

7. almost 4 years ago on That is Priceless

   I know this is too soon… but isn’t that a Starbuck’s coffee cup on the rock in the lower right corner?

8. about 4 years ago on Moderately Confused

   Ah, okay. Now I see your point. There is a broader use of articles in being “determiners.” The old reference form I was referring to categorized the quantifiers with determiners and hence articles. In any case, articles are used as determiners to bring context (and sometimes quantity) to a noun. In this case the “an artist” isn’t singular in context but refers to a class of objects that may be multiple with the same characteristic. Hence, an artist identifies many artists with the characteristic “wears scarves” and the use the the plural pronoun “they” is required. This has been a very good discussion. Thank you.

9. about 4 years ago on Moderately Confused

   Some and All are quantifiers. The articles are used in some grammar constructs as quantifiers. “A” could imply multiple occurrences as in this case, even though we normally think of “A” as singular. This goes back to the language trying to accommodate the use of pronouns to replace specific nouns and the elimination of gender in the noun constructs as evident in other languages. For example: why is a book considered “male” in Latin based languages?

10. about 4 years ago on Moderately Confused

    The use of the plural pronoun is correct in this context. It has nothing to do with gender neutrality. “AN ARTIST” refers to “ANY” artist, not a particular singular artist. So, THEY (the artists (plural)) will have a general characteristic. It is an old syntactical construct so that the English use of articles (an, a, the, some, all, etc.) can be referred to with a pronoun (singular or plural).