Learning When to Use the Definite Article with English Proper Names

Abstract

One of the most difficult aspects of English language learning is the use of articles. This paper studies the rules which explain whether an English proper noun can be preceded by the article the. In English proper nouns such as the United States, the Bible, the Arctic Circle or the Ohio River contain the in the beginning while proper nouns such as America, President Bush, Lake Tohata or Niagara Falls do not allow use of the article. For such a language phenomenon, grammar books usually only provide two lists: one contains the proper nouns accompanied by the, while the other contains the proper nouns that occur without the. Such a categorization without explanations creates a heavy load on the EFL learner's memory. This paper points out that for most proper nouns in English, the concept of the syntactic head of a noun phrase can be applied to explain the use or non-use of the definite article in such cases. With such a syntactic distinction, it can be found that only several semantic types of proper nouns reject the use of the definite article without explanations. With these syntactic and semantic distinctions, we can find that the use of the definite article the in an English proper noun can be logically explained without the student depending too much on mere memorization. Learning the use of articles with proper nouns needs not to be a random task.