Spemex
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- Nov 10, 2010
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The question is very simple: Can we use the articles a/an before the world 'knowledge'?
The answer seems to be plain and simple. Knowledge is an uncountable noun and has no plural form, thus no articles are allowed.
Yet when we take a closer look, it turns out that the phrase "a deep knowledge" ('deep' being a random adjective) it is commonly found in sources known for their good English. Here is a customised Google search result for that phrase. Below are some example:
Source: University of Oxford, Department of Computer Science
Text: Just as advances in engineering rely on a deep foundational knowledge of physics, so too advances in algorithms and programming rely on a deep knowledge of the intrinsic nature of computation.
Source: Gov.uk
Text: Research to develop a deep knowledge of who the service users are and what that means for digital and assisted digital service design.
Source: The Higher Education Academy
Text: "critical thinking includes a deep knowledge of oneself, which takes both intellectual courage and humility.
And it goes on and on... The COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) turns up 34 results for "a deep knowledge". Those are usually the places that linguists go to check out the grammatical correctness (by analysing the prevalence of the word/phrase in question).
So my question is how that grammatical rule translates to real English? Are all those authors writing in respectable media and on those websites (Oxford, Guardian, CNN, BBC, New York Times, etc.) simply wrong? Or is there something more to it?
The answer seems to be plain and simple. Knowledge is an uncountable noun and has no plural form, thus no articles are allowed.
Yet when we take a closer look, it turns out that the phrase "a deep knowledge" ('deep' being a random adjective) it is commonly found in sources known for their good English. Here is a customised Google search result for that phrase. Below are some example:
Source: University of Oxford, Department of Computer Science
Text: Just as advances in engineering rely on a deep foundational knowledge of physics, so too advances in algorithms and programming rely on a deep knowledge of the intrinsic nature of computation.
Source: Gov.uk
Text: Research to develop a deep knowledge of who the service users are and what that means for digital and assisted digital service design.
Source: The Higher Education Academy
Text: "critical thinking includes a deep knowledge of oneself, which takes both intellectual courage and humility.
And it goes on and on... The COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) turns up 34 results for "a deep knowledge". Those are usually the places that linguists go to check out the grammatical correctness (by analysing the prevalence of the word/phrase in question).
So my question is how that grammatical rule translates to real English? Are all those authors writing in respectable media and on those websites (Oxford, Guardian, CNN, BBC, New York Times, etc.) simply wrong? Or is there something more to it?
