My understanding of the meaning and use of definite/indefinite article in linguistics has always been shaky, but in practical terms, I7 doesn’t always do what I want. Help me understand this.
[code]Test is a room.
A body part is a kind of thing. The indefinite article of a body part is usually “your”.
A hand is a body part. It is part of yourself.
test me with “x hand”[/code]
I know that the game says “the hand” here because the definite article is used in most verb responses - the indefinite article is mostly used in listings. But this seems to be obviously at variance with what players and authors would expect.
It seems like in a case like this, we really want to change the definite article, which you can’t change out of the box. What’s the rationale for that?
I’ve come up with this hack, but I’m not sure it will do the right thing in all situations, and of course it won’t affect library messages:
[code]To say the indefinite (item - a thing):
if the indefinite article of item is empty:
say “[the item]”;
otherwise:
say “[an item]”;
To say The indefinite (item - a thing):
if the indefinite article of item is empty:
say “[The item]”;
otherwise:
say “[An item]”;
[/code]
Is this the right way to go?