The usage of the article "the" in serially enumerative sentences

[Joe Carillo]

Here’s a grammar question posted by Forum member Pipes last October 3, 2012 in my personal box in the Forum:

Dear Mr. Carillo,

How are you doing?

I would just like to ask if it is really necessary to put the article “the” before every musical instrument, as in: “Mary can play the piano and the drums, but she can’t play the saxophone and the xylophone.” Can I just put “the” before the first noun for brevity’s sake? For instance, “Mary can play the piano and drums, but she can’t play the saxophone and xylophone.”

Hope you could enlighten me on this.

Thank you so much.

My reply to Pipes:

Yes, both grammatically and stylistically as well as for euphony’s sake, it’s necessary to put the article “the” before the name of every musical instrument when it’s a stand-alone item in a sentence. This is why it’s proper and idiomatic to say “Mary can play the piano,” “Mary can play the drums,” “Mary can’t play the saxophone,” and “Mary can’t play the xylophone.” The grammar rule that applies here is that the definite article “the” is needed because the name of the musical instrument is a specific or particular name; “the” signals to the listener or reader that the noun representing the musical instrument is definite. Not to use “the” before the name of the musical instrument will send the wrong, improper signal that the noun referred to is a proper noun—“Mary can play Piano,” “Mary can play Drums,” “Mary can’t play Saxophone,” and “Mary can’t play the Xylophone”—in much the same way as saying “Mary can play Chopin” or “Mary can play Ryan Cayabyab,” which, of course, isn’t the case at all in such grammatical situations.

                                            IMAGE CREDIT: YOUTUBE

When the names of two or more musical instruments are serially enumerated in a sentence, it's grammatically acceptable to use the article “the” only once—it has to be positioned right before the first item in the list—to signal that the names in the list are definite nouns. (In general, for brevity’s sake, English gives us this alternative in dealing with serial enumeration of singular-form nouns in sentences.) We can therefore say “Mary can play the piano, saxophone, and xylophone” without blinking an eyelash or feeling guilty of grammatical misuse. There will seem to be a grammatical and uneuphonic glitch, though, when one of the musical instruments listed is plural in form, as “drums” in “Mary can play the piano, drums, saxophone, and xylophone.” In such instances, to preclude any criticism that the speaker or writer is grammatically clueless or tonally deaf, it would be prudent to individually precede each and every item in the enumeration with the definite article “the”: “Mary can play the piano, the drums, the saxophone, and the xylophone.”

For a very comprehensive discussion of the usage of the definite article “the” and also of the indefinite articles “a” and “an,” check out the Purdue Online Writing Lab by clicking the indicated link. I’m sure that once you’ve internalized the formal prescriptions for their usage in sentences, you’ll never be in doubt ever again in using the correct articles for every conceivable type of noun.