English grammar - Roger Berry 2012

B3.4 The definite article: specific uses
B3 Articles
Section B Development

With common nouns the is basically used to help the noun refer to a thing or things that the speaker (or writer) thinks the listener (or reader) can locate or identify

uniquely, that is, without confusing it or them with other possible referents. This applies in the following cases:

a) Where’ the butter? - immediate situation

b) The President is going to make a speech. - larger situation

These two ’situational’ uses involve knowledge of one’s environment, and they are very common in spoken English. For example, if you are in a kitchen, you could expect the fridge, the floor, the table (perhaps), the light, etc. If you are in a particular country, you could expect the government, the economy, the president, etc. What is sometimes called ’unique reference’, as with the sun and the moon, is just an extension of this.

c) I ate a cake and a roll; the roll made me sick. - direct anaphora

d) The first time I rode my bike, the machine fell apart. - coreferential anaphora

e) The first time I rode my bike, the bell fell off. - indirect anaphora

In these three uses ’anaphora’ simply means referring back to something earlier in the text. In c) it is the same noun, roll, in d) it is the same thing but referred to with a different noun (bike/machine), while in e) there is something associated with an already-mentioned noun, something that could be expected (e.g. on a bike: the seat, the handlebars, the bell).

f) The girls sitting over there are my cousins. - cataphora

Cataphora means referring forward; in this case it is the postmodification, sitting over there, which makes the reference of the noun identifiable.

g) He’ the best person for the job. - ’unique’ adjectives

Sometimes premodification can be the reason for definiteness. Superlative and similar adjectives (e.g. next, same, only), which give an idea of uniqueness, tend to have this effect.

h) The boy with the fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon. (The first line from the novel, The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.)

This last use may be called the ’pre-emptive’ use of the definite article, since the author is trying to create, rather than reflect, the conditions for definiteness. This use is common at the start of stories.