Exceptions of words which always use 'the' article

[mbortas_art55]

I know that English has some words which always use "the" article like: the past/present/future, the truth, the same, the process, the end, the way, the (name) language, the (name) religion etc.

I looked around the Cambridge dictionary a bit, the word "process" and I can't understand these sentences:

Increasing the number of women in top management jobs will be a slow process.

I don't get it how "slow process" can be general/unknown when we have some words that they can specify the meaning like "the number of women in top management jobs". If we know so, then we must know which process is about.

The party has begun the painful (= difficult) process of rethinking its policies and strategy.

How can this process be specific/defined if the previous sentence use "a slow process"? By this logic, it should go like this: "The party has begun a painful process of rethinking its policies and strategy". I'm so confused.

I asked ChatGPT, and it's too abstract explanation of "general" and "specific" in the context of articles

I'm trying to learn from context but it just doesn't work. I want to solve the article issue once and for all to not bother you.

 

[jutfrank]

I know that English has some words which always use "the" article like: the past/present/future, the truth, the same, the process, the end, the way, the (name) language, the (name) religion etc.

That's not right. Those words may also take the indefinite article or the zero article instead, depending on the meaning.

I don't get it how "slow process" can be general/unknown

It isn't unknown. When we say an indefinite article makes something 'general', we mean to talk about it as if it were a member of a general class of things. It's not easy to understand this, so I'll try to explain with a different example:

This is a difficult topic.

The reference word This specifies the topic, and the indefinite phrase a difficult topic says what kind of topic it is. Think of this topic as being a specific member of a more generalised set of difficult topics, and then think of 'difficult topics' as themselves being a kind of a more general class of topics.

we must know which process is about.

Yes, we know which process (increasing the number of women in top management jobs) and we know what kind of process it is (a slow process).

I asked ChatGPT, and it's too abstract explanation of "general" and "specific" in the context of articles

You will not get a clear answer from ChatGPT in relation to this. What ChatGPT does effectively is synthesise content that it has in its training dataset. This includes information that is inadequate, irrelevant, misleading, badly expressed, and downright wrong.

I'm trying to learn from context but it just doesn't work. I want to solve the article issue once and for all to not bother you.

Learning from context is the right way to do it, and abstract explanantions may be helpful, but as I said before, this is very hard to understand and it's possible you will never get it, and will have to rely on learning it naturally. I've spent many years reading about article usage in both semantics and philosophy, and have attempted to explain it to some very intelligent students, with mixed results. I'm happy to answer any specific questions in more depth, if you have any.