jutfrank
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- Joined
- Mar 5, 2014
- Member Type
- English Teacher
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- English
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- England
What do you think about GS's reply in #6: The author could have used the definite article, but would have lost the transition from discussing a specific thinker to discussing the general case of any thinker.
It seems GS thinks both variants make sense.
Yes, it seems so. I'll let GS respond to this, if he wants to.
And as a side note, I'd like to notice that reference issues are more or less universal. Although Russian doesn't have articles, if somebody told me I saw cat. Cat was black, I would easily discern the indefiniteness of the first cat and the definiteness of the second one and understand that the second cat was referring to the first one. When I translate Frege's sentences into Russian, I clearly see three referential possibilities with regard to the third thinker: a) an aforementioned person (anaphorically definite) b) a unique role (inherently definite -> its definiteness doesn't depend on a particular situation -> can be used in a general context), c) any person (indefinite/general). And it's surprising to me that only the last one makes sense to you. By default, I would choose a).
Yes, only the last one really works in that particular context. If the text did say the thinker instead of a thinker, I'd take your possibility a) as the intended meaning.