the cow, the pig, and the horse

Question

I know the following two sentences are correct:

1. The cow is a useful animal.

2. The lion is the king of animals.

In this case, cows and lions are represented as categories of animals. The definite article is used, but no specific reference is meant. Also, the sentences are definitions of the categories "lion" and "cow." Now let's consider the following sentence:

3. I drove to my friend's farm yesterday. There were three kinds of animals there: the cow, the pig, and the horse. Specifically, three were ten cows, twenty pigs, and five horses.

Is the use of the bolded definite articles in sentence #3 correct, or does the principle of using the definite article to represent something as a category apply only when giving a definition of the category (as in sentences #1 and #2)?

Answer 1

Without a much more specialized situation, that form of species reference would sound quaint; here's the sort of context that is needed:

In the first year of veterinary school, there's a required course, Vertebrate Physiology 101, where you study the dog, the cat, and two farm animals, the cow and the horse.

In everyday English, we'd use the plural as the generic:

We took the kids to a petting zoo which has a number of domestic species on site: ducks, cows, goats, and lambs, as well as some miniature horses imported from South Africa.

P.S. The version with definite article is used when referring to the noun in terms of its paradigmatic instance, that is, when discussing the creature in terms of its core set of characteristics, to which variant characteristics may be "attached" as its subtypes may require.

Answer 2

When we can use "the lion" like this, it's usually not just to talk about "a category," but all lions, and we talk as if they're represented by a single symbolic beast. We say "the lion has a tawny yellow coat," even though some individuals are in fact albino. Or we use "the" plus a singular, even when not talking about every instance of that thing, to talk about an abstracted imaginary singular that represents many instances. This kind of talk doesn't happen so often with animals, but maybe for instance "Our outreach organization serves the single mother who struggles to make ends meet." They don't serve every single mother, but many, and they're describing them as one representative person.

So it wouldn't fit, and it's not because there are three animals in a series; it wouldn't work even if your friend's farm raised only lions ("his farm contains the lion") because they don't have "all the lions," or even "an abstracted average representation of most lions in general" (as in the song "Home on the Range" when it refers to "the buffalo" who roam there). In theory everything I've said would work if the sentence had the goal of describing these animals in general, like "On my friends farm, the cow is well treated"... but in practice, we just don't generalize about animals this way often, except when talking about entire species.

Answer 3

I believe this is technically allowed. But it would not be used in this situation, unless maybe to make it sound archaic and poetic. And even then, it would be too easily confused to be a good wording. As you demonstrate in the way you asked your question, the idiomatic way to refer to members of a category is the plural:

There were three kinds of animals there: cows, pigs, and horses.

Answer 4

OP asked if this sentence is correct:

I drove to my friend's farm yesterday. There were three kinds of animals there: the cow, the pig, and the horse. Specifically, there were ten cows, twenty pigs, and five horses.

Answer: The definite article with a species of an animal (which represents a whole category) is primarily used to make a general statement or definition.

The sentence sounds awkward in daily speech and can be simplified as:

• I drove to my friend's farm yesterday and saw ten cows, twenty pigs, and five horses.

The sentence with the definite article could be an answer to the question (sounds Zoological):

• Identify the species of animals your friend has on the farm.

The expected response would be species names, which could be given as "the cow, the pig, and the horse."

Answer 5

the cow, the pig, and the horse

When I read that title on the Hot Network Questions list, I thought it was the title of a children's story similar to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis.

But the characters of the story do not each represent a category but rather the singular animal, the female with supernatural powers, and an inanimate piece of furniture. If there had been more than one lion and witch, the story would probably have been titled: The Lions, the Witches, and the Wardrobe

When we speak about a representative of something or something, we often do use the singular with the definite article.

• The lion is a beast that often lives in the Savannah.

The lion is a well-muscled cat with a long body, large head, and short legs.
Source Britannica

The cow is a ruminant, and cow's milk has evolved to promote bacterial growth in the upper small bowel; whereas human milk has evolved to discourage bacterial growth.
Source: The human rumen by A A Jackson, M H Golden

When talking about inanimate things or animals in general, we use the plural form. The use of the indefinite article a, in a pet pig, suggests “any pig that is kept as a pet”.

• In recent years, the intellect and friendliness of pigs have been re-evaluated and appreciated. The number of families that has a pet pig in the home, especially in the country, is no longer perceived as being peculiar.

The plural applies to all sorts of animals, including pets and farm animals.

• Children visitors can see how cows, sheep, pigs and horses live on a farm and how they are looked after.

English native speakers will always omit the definite article in speech.

• My friend's farm has [got] cows, pigs and horses.
• There are only three kinds of animals living on my friend's farm: cows, pigs and horses.

Using the definite article (the) would sound academic and rather pompous because we're talking about a friend's farm, not about a breed, e.g. The Great Dane is an extremely large domestic dog… or a particular species.

The following examples may be grammatical but they do not reflect natural speech in English.

• My friend's farm has the cow, the pig and the horse.
• There are only three kinds of animals living on my friend's farm: the cow, the pig and the horse.

Answer 6

I drove to my friend's farm yesterday. There were three kinds of animals there: the cow, the pig, and the horse.

Unfortunately, this is not correct.

When we use the generic definite article with an animal as in your first two examples, we are referring to that class of animal as a whole. As such, we can only use it to make statements that are generally true about every example of that animal. So, "the cow is a useful animal" means that, generally speaking, all cows are useful.

That is not the case with your 3rd example, above. You are not making any statements that apply to all cows. All cows are not on your friend's farm.

More commonly, we would say something like:

There were three kinds of animals: cows, pigs and horses.

Another reason why your original example feels wrong is that you've already used the term "kind". In context, this can mean a particular group or type of animal. You've effectively already grouped them, so what follows ought to be more detail, not another generic term. Even just using the plural terms adds the detail that there are many of them. There may even be different kinds, or breeds, of those three animals.

Note that this use of "the" with animals in a generic sense is more formal and less common in everyday speech.

Answer 7

The answers here are all very misleading.

Is the use of the bolded definite articles in sentence #3 correct,

It is WRONG. Example three is about SPECIFIC cows. It is NOT about a CATEGORY or CONCEPT or ABSTRACTION. Hence the use of "the" is SIMPLY WRONG. (Note that it is not ARCHAIC or otherwise: it is WRONG.)

It's that simple.

or does the principle of using the definite article to represent something as a category apply only when giving a definition of the category (as in sentences #1 and #2)

WRONG.

1. You use the "the" when referring to a CATEGORY, CONCEPT or ABSTRACTION (as in 1/2)

2. Example 3 IS NOT REFERRING TO A CATEGORY, it is referring to 35 specific animals.

3. Whether giving a "definition" is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT. If you are REFERRING to a CATEGORY, you use "the". End of story.

Again, example 3 simply has nothing to do with categories/concepts/abstractions, in any way.

And, justto repeat, your idea that "definition.." is involved is totally spurious and completely unrelated in anyway. If you are discussing a category you use "the", end of story. If you are Not discussing a category you do Not use "the", end of story. (And purely FWIW, the first two sentences are not at all "definitions".)

The "use 'the'..." rule has absolutely no relation to the nature of your sentence. If you're talking about a category you use the 'the' and that's it.