B. The Definite Article

The article 'the' derives from the Old English demonstrative pronoun 'se' (that), which accounts for deflniteness as its basic meaning: both the speaker and the hearer know what is being talked about.

The definiteness of the thing, object, etc. arises from a) an earlier mention of the noun in the context.

Sue and Frank have got two children: a girl and a boy. The girl is a student and the boy is still at school.

A man came up to a policeman and asked him a question. The policeman didn 't understand the question and so he asked the man to repeat it.

I've recently bought new jeans. The jeans cost me a pretty penny.

I found cheese and yogurt in the fridge. The cheese was absolutely stale.

b) the presence of a specifying (particularizing) modifier

Wow, the sand is really hot! (an uncountable nounof material)

The film wasn 't good but we liked the music, (an uncountable abstract noun)

Come and look at the horses! (a countable noun, plural)

The definite article can also precede a proper noun. It is used, in particular, with nouns denoting the name of the whole family (the Browns) or geographical names such as water­ways (the Indian Ocean, the Volga, the Naroch, but Lake Naroch), mountain ranges (the Alps, the Urals, but Everest), and the name of cardinal points (the South, the North}. It must be remembered, however, that no article is used with the names of the continents (Asia, Europe), countries (Russia. Belarus, France), mountain peaks and towns.* There are a great number of set expressions and phrases in English in which the use of the indefinite, definite or zero article does not depend on the context. Memorizing some of them will help the learner to cope with the difficulties of using the article. Below is a list of such phrases.