Steven D'Aprano wrote:
"please hand all monies to the bursar",
I think that's another case of an implied unit, the unit in this case being the money involved in one transaction.
but it would be weird to say "please hand five monies to the bursar".
It would, but I'm not sure I could explain exactly why. :-)
In a lingustic sence the "a" is not a count -- that would be the word "one" --, it is the indefinite article.
It still means one of something, though. If there's a difference, it's that it's somewhat more vague. "There's a fly in my soup!" is expressing surprise that there are more than zero flies present. You are referring to the first one you happen to see; there might be others, but they're not relevant. Whereas "There is one fly in my soup!" is being precise about the number of flies. -- Greg -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
