happyfamilyshirts: No, we would not normally use ‘a’ in your ‘look’ sentence.

No, we would not normally use ‘a’ in your ‘look’ sentence. I might say, “I can see a cat over there,” where I’m mentioning this one cat among all cats for the first time. But once I tell my friend to look at something right now, it’s already a specific thing and not just one of many, so only “Look at the/that cat over there” is natural. Remember, the demonstrative adjectives (this, that, these, and those) are used for pointing at specific things. Later I might say, “I’d like you to look at a cat with me in the pet store tomorrow,” where I want my friend’s opinion on a possible pet purchase. Now I say ‘a cat’ because it’s not visible, it’s just one cat among many for my friend, and I’m mentioning it for the first time. It’s true that in a familiar speech I might say, “I’d like you to look at this cat with me in the pet store tomorrow,” where ‘this cat’ means ‘a particular cat,’ but this is an informal usage.

happyfamilyshirts

Saturday, July 31, 2021

No, we would not normally use ‘a’ in your ‘look’ sentence.

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