Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  Articles & possessive pronouns are determiners.

ak>  Oh, Jesus Christ! Yes, determiners!


         Not to worry.  Because you're multilingual, I reckoned you were doing
what another friend of ours... a native speaker of English... did after living
in Paris for a few years & marrying a Frenchman.  She said "amplificator" when
she meant "amplifier", e.g., using the French ending & pronouncing the word in
English.  Luckily I knew enough French to grasp the idea & remembered how as a
student I forgot Latin & French after studying German all summer... [chuckle].



ak>  I heard that "the hospical"
                        |typo alert!!  While "t" is located two rows
                         distant from "c" on my keyboard, YMMV.  :-)

ak>  is spoken in American English.


         So many interesting topics... and only twenty-four hours in a day!  I
would still like to clarify the terms "American" & English(wo)man" eventually.
For now I'll just add that not everybody realizes certain words have more than
one meaning in English.  I'll answer to "American" or "English(wo)man" as long
as such generalizations are made in the spirit of academic inquiry rather than
of competition.  WRT the latter, I'm in the enviable position of being able to
say "Surely they don't mean me!" or "Either way is correct in Canada...."  ;-)

         WRT what you were asking about... yes, I have heard "in the hospital"
used around these parts (i.e. southwestern Canada).  As I pointed out earlier,
however, it may not be the best choice unless one wants to identify with folks
from back home.  In my experience English majors from the big city don't speak
that way because circumstances are different there.  One can't assume a person
is in the hospital closest to where they live or to where xxx occurred.

         Another example which just came to mind... let's say a bunch of young
men get into a fight outside a beer parlour in downtown Vancouver.  We hear on
the TV news that the participants are "known to police".  We also know it's as
likely as not that at least some of these guys reside in the suburbs.  In this
context "the police" wouldn't work although one or more witnesses may tell you
they called the (Vancouver) police.  I'm sure the Vancouver Police Department,
the Surrey RCMP, etc. share information with one another.  But they don't tell
nosey reporters exactly which police department knows what about whom....  :-)



ak>  Also they use a verb single form with "police" and
ak>  have some things like this.


         Hmm... depending on the context in which "police" is used, maybe.  We
don't inflect adjectives the way folks do in some other languages.  This means
we can, and often do, link nouns together in a series as folks do in German:

                oak tree
                emergency exit
                police officer, police report, police department
                fire truck, school bus, sports utility vehicle
                computer science teacher
                 ... plus (a tongue twister from my childhood)
                rubber baby buggy bumpers
                 ... and (my linguistics instructor's favourite)
                cottage cheese salad recipe book
                 ... and comedians Flanders & Swann's
                London Transport diesel engine 97 horsepower omnibus.

The average desk dictionary will probably inform you that "police" may be used
as a noun or a verb.  IOW the authors have fulfilled their duty by identifying
the parts of speech correctly.  But now you may need to consult a source which
goes into more detail about the grammar of the relationships between words.  I
would suggest you look up "noun adjectives" and/or "modifying nouns".  If that
doesn't help, I'd like to see some examples of what you have observed....  :-)



AH>  If you read your last sentence again, I think you may
AH>  find a typo.  Now... should one say "rules" or "the
AH>  rules" in this context?  I'm inclined to say "the rules"
AH>  because I'm thinking of a fairly standard set of "rules"
AH>  which native speakers of English are taught in the
AH>  primary grades.

ak>   No doubts, I missed "the."


         Uh-huh.  While you may feel more comfortable with rules sometimes, my
forte is taking others a bit beyond their comfort level & getting them to tell
me what they already know on the next level.  Give yourself a gold star.  :-))




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)