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Which article (an/the) is correct in this context?
This is an exercise we had to complete in our grammar class. I filled it up like this:
Write the missing articles, if one is needed.
A: Who is the man talking to C?
B: I'm not sure. I think he is a doctor.
A: He looks familiar. Do you know where he works?
B: I think he was the doctor who looked after C when she was in __ (zero article) hospital.
A: No—he is the assistant nurse.
My teacher said that all of it is correct, with only one exception. He says that it should have been an instead of the in the last blank. His reasoning is that ‘assistant nurse’ is being mentioned for the first time. And there are thousands of assistant nurses; we're talking about no one in particular.
But, I think that a particular ‘assistant nurse’ is in question—the one who looked after C when she was in hospital.
So which one of us is actually correct?
Soha Farhin Pine
Posted 2017-03-17T06:54:26.520
Reputation: 1 075
2If you read the exchange by skipping lines 3 & 4 (the bit about where he works) by reading only lines 1, 2, 5; that would imply they are talking about the man's profession (is he a doctor, is he an assistant nurse). However, if the context includes his place of employment, then the 5th line can be interpreted as "No - he is the assistant nurse <at the hospital>". – Phylyp – 2017-03-17T07:06:08.847
2Also, looking at the tense used in line 4 "he was the doctor who..." indicates they're talking about C's past hospitalization; whereas line 5 has the present tense, which would give weight to the fact that line 5 isn't referencing C's hospitalization discussed in line 4. – Phylyp – 2017-03-17T07:07:35.840
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
– Soha Farhin Pine – 2017-03-17T10:07:38.260FYI: "in hospital" isn't idiomatic in my experience, though it may be idiomatic elsewhere (possibly it's a British-ism?). I would say "in the hospital." Note that this is true even though "hospital" hasn't been mentioned yet, because whether or not a noun has been mentioned yet isn't actually a reliable criteria for selecting between indefinite and definite articles. – Kyle Strand – 2017-03-17T17:21:37.907
@KyleStrand If you are a patient at the hospital, you are "in hospital". On the other hand, if you happen to be a relative of a hospitalised patient or just at the hospital, you are "in the hospital". I hope I could make myself clear. – Soha Farhin Pine – 2017-03-17T18:01:23.810
@SohaFarhinPine I understand the intended meaning of the phrase, and I see how that could be a useful distinciton; nonetheless, I don't think I've actually heard it used by the native speakers I know, most of whom speak approximately the same dialect. We do in fact use "in the hospital" to mean "in hospital". – Kyle Strand – 2017-03-17T20:10:36.453
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@SohaFarhinPine A quick google search seems to indicate that my guess that this is a difference between British and American English was probably correct.
– Kyle Strand – 2017-03-17T20:13:42.577@KyleStrand My school has a British curriculum, so it's not surprising. I suspected the same, when you couldn't understand the reason behind my not putting
thebeforehospital. – Soha Farhin Pine – 2017-03-18T06:53:15.713@KyleStrand Both kinds of English seems to agree that it's correct to say we go to bed, go to sea, go to school, and so on, when referring to the general practice, but adding a definite article specifies which sea and which bed and which school. (On the other hand, everyone says that we "go to sleep": few native speakers would refer to a specific night's sleep as "I went to the sleep".) – Soha Farhin Pine – 2017-03-18T07:02:29.193
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
– Kyle Strand – 2017-03-18T15:25:02.217