Question posted by Prashant Solanki on the Forum's Facebook Gateway (August 14, 2017):Which is correct sir?
“____ bicycle is an environmentally friendly means of transportation.”
1) A
2) The
Can you explain it please? If both answers are correct, then what is the difference in their meaning?
My reply to Prashant:Here’s the difference, Prashant: When the indefinite article “a” is used, as in the sentence “
A bicycle is an environmentally friendly means of transportation,” the reference is to any particular bicycle among all kinds of bicycles. In contrast, when the definite article “the” is used, the reference is to the bicycle as a generic form of of two-wheeled transport driven by foot pedaling: “
The bicycle is an environmentally friendly means of transportation." It can be validly argued though that the first sentence, “
A bicycle is an environmentally friendly means of transportation,” is a semantically flawed sentence because it actually defines “bicycle” as a generic term, which means that the definite article “the” should be used instead for such usage. The use of the indefinite article “a” will only be perfectly defensible in such sentences as “
A bicycle was left behind under the mango tree” or “No one wants
a bicycle with a very bumpy ride,” both of which refer to a particular bicycle and not to the generic term.
I would like to invite you to visit Jose Carillo's English Forum for answers to many such English grammar questions. A good way to begin is to check out the
Forum's Playlist Update for July 22 - 28, 2017 for its Gateway on Facebook. Everything should follow very nicely from there.
