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I have a problem with these sentences. which one is correct?and why?

  • He studied the role of an/the/ ' extended family in caring for older people.
Hamid Reza
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  • There is only one sentence, and it depends on whether he studied a particular (an) extended family or many, (the) extended family. What does a zero or null article Ø/Ø' mean? If you mean no article, that is wrong in both cases. – Weather Vane Jun 17 '20 at 17:07
  • I have no problem with *not having an article* in the cited context (here are plenty of written instances of *the role of extended family* in Google Books). I've glanced at this explanation of the difference between zero and null articles (apparently they're semantic *opposites*), but I haven't quite figured it out yet. – FumbleFingers Jun 17 '20 at 17:19
  • (By which I mean is it syntactically possible to treat He studied the role of extended family in caring for older people as featuring BOTH zero and null articles - and if so, do they have clearly-identifiable different meanings / allusions / nuances?) – FumbleFingers Jun 17 '20 at 17:21
  • Arguably the implication of using *an* rather than *the* is that the indefinite article more readily admits of the possibility that *not everyone has an extended family. The implication of not having either (zero? null?) is that "extended family"* is a well-established concept in the "social science" domain. – FumbleFingers Jun 17 '20 at 17:26

1 Answers1

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The choice depends on what meaning you are trying to convey.

He studied the role of an extended family in caring for older people.

This implies that he studied a particular extended family and how it affected the care of the older people in that "family".

He studied the role of the extended family in caring for older people.

This implies that he studied multiple extended families and collected/correlated his observations into some sort of organized work.

He studied the role of extended family in caring for older people.

This is similar to the "the" case except that the implication is that he studied the concept of "extended family".

(Though it should be noted that the above is just "implications" -- you'd have to read the final report to know if these were on target or not.)

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  • I interpret "the extended family" as meaning extended families in general. – Barmar Jun 18 '20 at 05:00
  • "the" implies that the subject which we are talking about is known for both speaker and listener. and we use "a/an" when we talk about Sth in general. so u mentioned that "This implies that he studied multiple extended families and collected/correlated his observations into some sort of organized work." is this another use of "the"? and as I mentioned "a" is used when we talk about sth in general. but you told "he studied a particular extended family" this is opposite what I knew. may you explain it more? – Hamid Reza Jun 18 '20 at 11:25