Truth will out. Truth is stranger than fiction. There wasn’t a grain of truth in what she said. –- Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth

No doubt that there isn’t any change in the meaning of the word: irrespective of article determination truth will always be conceptually opposed to falsehood. Yet there is a difference in the word’s use. The zero article form of the noun is meant to show that the notion is taken in its most abstract, absolute sense in its opposition to falsehood, deceit or fiction whereas the form with the definite article is used to indicate a narrower meaning, such as a concrete, ultimate and only one truth. Thus, the noun becomes unique: the truth is opposed to a lie or many lies, which is manifested in the collocations: to tell the truth – to tell a lie/lies. [16]

The use of the noun with the definite article may also individualise and thus reveal both implicitly and explicitly the opposition of the two notions which constitute a whole. Take, for example, a phrase like the pleasures of the flesh. Its underlying message is demonstrated in the saying The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak: - the flesh and the spirit are the inseparable parts of a human being. It is not surprising, therefore, that the opposition of “the flesh”(the body) and “the spirit” is often used in various contexts:

If we tried to formulate our meaning in one word we should say that these three writers are materialists. It is because they are concerned not with the spirit but with the body … (V. Woolf)

She (Emily Bronte) could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body … (V. Woolf)

The above observation and the supporting illustrations are not at all contradictory to phrases without an article:

I can’t come to your wedding, but I’ll be there in spirit.

I can’t attend the meeting in person, but I’m sending someone to speak for me.

Catholic students should set an example to other young people by their purity of mind and body. (D. Lodge)

The implicit opposition of the notions and the phrases is there but they are given without any individualisation: the human spirit or mind, i.e. the ability to feel and think is generally opposed to the human flesh or body and yet displays no link with a concrete person.

It should be noted that these nouns can be used not only as part of set phrases but on their own and may differ in terms of article determination. An example of this can be seen in an extract from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy:

To be, or not to be – that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep –

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to…(W. Shakespeare)

In this context the noun flesh seems to acquire a new meaning, a broader one and actually denotes man in general, a human being born to suffer and thus opposed to other forms of life or inanimate objects insensitive to pain or feeling.

Another type of opposition is revealed in the extract below where flesh is used in the meaning “reality” and opposed to dream:

As soon as he set eyes on her at the Christmas Hop he knew he must make his own, she was his dream made flesh in a pink angora jumper and black taffeta skirt. (D. Lodge)

In view of conceptual opposition in the speaker’s mind, the abundance of parallel structures in English that may include nouns of different lexical-grammatical classes is entirely explicable: life and death, language and speech, etc. (See § 3) It is a reasonable inference that both morpho-syntactic and lexical-phraseological isolation results from mental processes or ideas which determine the choice of a particular structure.

It should be noted that parallel structures may vary both lexically and syntactically. The above cases result from generalisation and conceptual opposition, the absence of the article being meaningful or semiotically relevant. They should be kept distinct from phrases whose nominal elements do not display any generalization or opposition, for the articles are omitted for purely stylistic reasons. For example: reader and writer, mother and baby, doctor and patient, hand in hand, eye to eye, face to face, etc.

Interestingly, parallel structures of both types may be formally identical. Compare: from birth to grave – from time to time, from year to year, from country to country. The omission of the article in English will be taken up in detail in § 9.

Generalised concepts often take attributes, which are neither descriptive (typical of classification), nor limiting (characteristic of individualisation). Usually they are used in preposition to a noun and may be of 2 types. First, they point to the intrinsic nature of a concept, which shows it in implicit opposition to other concepts, and finally contribute to the global concept which cannot be split up: adult life, working life, political life; high pressure, low pressure. (See § 3)

Second, attributes can be used to intensify the intrinsic qualities of a concept: great pleasure, unusual, unaccountable silence, immense pressure. Here comes an extract which seems to be illustrating both types of attributes before the noun tradition in its generalised meaning “very old customs, beliefs considered together”:

“How old is your boy?”

“Eight.”

“Oh, God!” His voice was despairing, which Virginia found comforting. Here at last was a twin soul, someone who thought the way she thought.

“He’s just a baby. I never wanted him to go, and I fought every inch of the way. But his father was adamant. It’s tradition. Good old British stiff-upper-lip tradition. He thinks it’s the right thing to do… (R. Pilcher)

Virginia has just parted with her son and feels miserable. She had to take him to a boarding school because of his father’s wish to follow family tradition. Here the word under analysis is used to denote an action or decision, which is taken against Virginia’s will. Thus the opposition typical of generalisation at large is there: tradition, which may be understood as standard practice, reason, conservatism and pressure is opposed to real wishes, feeling and sincerity. The intrinsic features of tradition in this sense are represented by the attributes of the first type, such as good, old and British, which are further emphasized by the attribute of the second type: stiff-upper-lip.

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