- From: Adrien de Croy <adrien@qbik.com>
- Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:09:12 +1200
- To: John Kemp <john@jkemp.net>
- CC: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>, Henrik Nordstrom <henrik@henriknordstrom.net>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, 'HTTP Working Group' <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
Form a purely lingustic point of view, 'The' doesn't mean there can be only one. 'the' being the definite article as opposed to 'a' being the indefinite article purely distinguishes between a particular known thing and any unknown thing. So I think in this case, 'the' simply refers to a particular list that we are currently considering (therefore it is known in the context of the sentence), rather than saying there can be only one, or referring to any unknown list which is what 'a' would imply. Adrien John Kemp wrote: > > Mark Nottingham wrote: >> >> Not clear. My take (as a native American speaker who has been >> corrupted to speak en-au sometimes) is that 'the' implies that there >> is only one possible set. > > That's also my understanding as an en-gb native, corrupted to speak > ~en-us/gb. > >> >> However, I'm not that fussed about it; I'm happy to give it to the >> editors to decide (and I suspect they'll change it to 'the'). >> >> Unless someone has a good technical argument otherwise, and is >> passionate enough about it to hold us up, we'll let them decide. > > No engineering-based technical argument, but I do think there is a > clear semantic difference between 'a list' (one of a potential > several) and 'the list' (the only list). Using 'a' implies (to me at > least) that the server may maintain more than one list of allowed > methods for the given resource, and return a particular list given > particular circumstances. 'The' doesn't imply that to me. If we wish > to imply by that sentence that there is no single list of allowed > methods per resource, and we believe that anyone other than me will > notice the difference, then using 'a' would make sense. > > Or, we could just let the editors decide ;) > > Regards, > > - john > >> >> >> On 07/04/2008, at 9:39 AM, Henrik Nordstrom wrote: >> >>> sön 2008-04-06 klockan 13:57 +0200 skrev Julian Reschke: >>> >>>> I haven't heard any new feedback, so I propose that we go with this >>>> proposal. >>> >>> Was there consensus on "the list" -> "a list" change? >>> >>> I have no opinion on that change as of now, but it looks odd to me (but >>> may just be a language issue with English not being my native language) >>> >>> Regards >>> Henrik >>> >> >> >> -- >> Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/ >> >> > > -- Adrien de Croy - WinGate Proxy Server - http://www.wingate.com
Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2008 07:09:07 UTC