Post 7: "The" + a silent object

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Revisiting: objects are quiet.

Objects that don’t easily or immediately correspond to words have at least one interesting relationship to language (likely many) in that they are able to be referred to with articles and talked about with conjunctions: the [unnameable thing], a [unnameable thing], [unnameable thing] and [unnameable thing]. But what happens to the quietness of an unnamed object when a “the” is added to it? Is the word “the” the most specific and correct word (it seems like it might be) you can apply to an object without a name? I say specific and correct because applying a “the” to an object doesn’t seem to approximate that object in the way that applying adjectives or other descriptive terms to it seems to. For instance, in calling something "the blue thing," the word "the" doesn't do much in terms of polarizing the thing at hand, but the word "blue" does a lot--and very likely too much or too little. (The word “thing” does stuff too, but I think in good ways [or, at least in ways I am partial to].)

Does the word "the" remain a neutral-seeming term when it is followed by an object rather than by another word?


The:

-Doesn’t do much?

-Does do more than “a”?

-Establishes something as something?

-Do objects without names already contains “the”s?

-What would make something unable to be given a preceding “the”?

-Is an object always second and “the” is first? Object follows word?


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