The law of conservation of "the"

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jan 22, 2010, at 7:15 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 1/22/2010 07:27 AM, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>>
>> ... 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."

surely Lynne was writing with tongue in cheek.  it's an entertaining
idea, but preposterous.

arnold

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