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Her hair was the color of a dried English walnut, rich and plentiful, and her complexion waxen—cream wax—-with lips of faint pink, and eyes that varied from ...
Could you explain the use of the indefinite article in this case to me, please?
I decided it is just a material noun and didn't put the article.
Michael
This makes more sense to me:
Her hair was the color of dried English walnuts, rich and plentiful, and her complexion waxen—cream wax—-with lips of faint pink, and eyes that varied from ...
(a) one dried walnut is not rich and plentiful
Dreiser wrote it, not me. Just my teacher used this text in a test and I made a mistake.
And I would like to know why Dreiser wrote this way.
Michael
For an answer to that, you would have to ask Dreiser. I suspect he preferred the sound of "a dried English walnut"'; to me it makes perfectly good sense to refer to a single dried walnut to describe hair colour than to many walnuts.
:up: Also, if you translate it without the article and keep the singular, you change the sense of 'walnut' (the wood rather than the nut). Given the context, this would be obviously wrong.
b
Why the walnut is dried? As far as I can understand, a ripe nut is ready to eat.
I suppose the word dried is the key here. Because wood really can be dried, but I have not heard about dried Englis walnuts.
Michael
I suspect that the walnut was rather old and dried, and when that happens its skin will have turned a darkish brown. A fresh walnut has a light golden brown skin.
Maybe Dreiser had some on the table where he was writing and they gave him the idea for her hair colour.
Hey Michael. How's tricks?Quote:
Originally Posted by Grablevskij
While we have a lot of freedom in adverb placement, your placement of 'just' is not all that natural, for your intended meaning. This placement carries a meaning like,
Just my teacher [and no one else] used this text in a test and I made a mistake.
My teacher just used this text in a test and I made a mistake.
Or (the way I understood it, but making allowance for a foreign speaker [because this interpretation is not normal]) "[It is] just [that] my teacher used this text in a test and [as a result, understandably] I made a mistake."
b
Thank you very much.
Michael