I know a/the beautiful girl who goes by the name of Jane.
I have the deepest affection for a/the beautiful girl who goes by the
name of Jane.In both instances, the definite article implies that the listener knows who Jane is, while the indefinite article doesn’t have this implication—the listener may or may not know who Jane is.
Is this correct?
Answer
I would not agree with that interpretation.
In both cases, the article a sounds like the right one to use, and the article the sounds incorrect. The use of the in those sentences would seem to imply there is only one beautiful girl named Jane on the entire planet. Even if our enamored speaker feels that way about his beloved Jane, the article the still sounds off.
Also, I don’t think the article implies that the listener knows (or doesn’t know) Jane. The way the sentence is structured, I would guess that the listener doesn’t know Jane, but that’s not because of the article. Rather, the phrase
…who goes by the name of Jane
seems like something we’d use when speaking about people we presume the listener doesn’t know. If the listener doesn’t know Jane, I would say:
I know a beautiful girl named Jane.
but, if the listener does know Jane, I think I’d phrase it more like this:
Jane is a beautiful girl, don’t you think?
As a footnote, I would only use the in this context when where was indeed only one entity I was talking about; perhaps:
The city worshipped the beautiful goddess Athena.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Sherlock , Answer Author : J.R.
