the/a son of a farmer

[MOYEEA LEE]

Dear teachers,

I know we can say: " the son of a farmer" to refer to the son

But if the farmer just have one son,

can I say:

a son of a farmer?

Thanks a lot!

 

[Matthew Wai]

a son of a farmer

I think the indefinite article denotes that the farmer has more than one son.

 

[MOYEEA LEE]

Matthew is right. There is also the point that we'd rarely say 'a son of a farmer'; we'd say 'a farmer's son'

And it is the same with "a car of a business man" right?
It just make sense if you say: "the car of a business man" or "a car of a business man's"

But if we say:
a photo of my grandma (here "of " is not talking about belongings, it means " about ", right?)

And "a car of his own", does this one imply the man has at least two cars?

 

[Matthew Wai]

I think 'a car of his own' means 'a car belonging to him', which denotes that he has a car; that does not denote he has more than one car.

'A photo of my grandma' means that your grandma is shown in
the phote. It is not 'about her'.

When he wrote 'about her', he was thinking about 'showing her'.

 

[MOYEEA LEE]

Possibly, but we simply don't say 'about her'.

But why can't we say
the car of our king, the son of the god
Besides, if the modifier is too long,
can we say:
an opinion of the chairman appointed a month ago. (Does this one imply the chairman has many opinions?)

Thanks a lot!

 

[MOYEEA LEE]

We can. It's just that we normally don't.

Yes
Not really.

I also looked up for some information.

I saw phrases like： “ the smell of it."

But is it true that normally we don't use objective cases of personal pronouns,

like:

the smell of me, the arrival of him

Thanks a lot!