The law of conservation of "the"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/22/2010 07:27 AM, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>I can't keep up with these discussions, exactly, but fwiw, here are some
>relevant blog posts from Separated by a Common Language, with lots of
>comments from lay and linguist readers:
>
>On 'the' in front of 'hospital' and some medical conditions:
><http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2007/04/menopause.html>

 From the above, the law of conservation of "the":

"So one's tempted to say that there's a the balance at work here: if
a 'the' goes missing in one dialect, it has to be replaced somewhere
else within that dialect."

Joel

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