Use of the Singular for Indefinite Objects

June 13, 2020 8:21 PM

I've recently noticed instances of usage of the singular tense for referencing indefinite objects and I am curious if there is a term for that usage, if it's regional or age-based, or derived from usage in another language, or what. It's difficult to explain and frustratingly non-Google-able (at least for me).

For example, instead of expressing one's appreciation for apples in general as "I like apples" (which sounds normal) the speaker says "I like an apple." This is usually delivered with an intonation that indicates its non-standard usage - I don't really know how to describe that.

In print, I came across an example on a Reddit post discussing subscription boxes that uses both: "Generally the best thing to come out of them are the PopVinyls. I love a PopVinyl but I'd rather just buy that."

It seems to me standard usage of the bold text would be "I love PopVinyls."

This all seems maybe related to the slangy reflexive usage "I love me a PopVinyl." Is there a linguistic term for this? Is it really happening more now, or am I just noticing it more?

posted by majorsteel to Writing & Language (30 answers total)

To me, "I like apples" is a categorical statement. It is part of my self-definition. But "I like an apple" doesn't really define me, it's just something along the lines of "Sure, I like to have one from time to time."

Linguists probably do have a term for this distinction. It'd be nice to know what it is.
posted by mono blanco at 8:31 PM on June 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

Reminds me of the phrasing "I love a good apple" or "I love a good PopVinyl" -- maybe that's where it comes from.
posted by mekily at 8:33 PM on June 13, 2020 [8 favorites]

I’ve seen this usage in a couple places, mostly starting with “dearly loves a ____”. They seem to go back a few decades, and I recall at least one usage from Patrick O’Brian’s books intended to sound like 18th century vernacular.
posted by migurski at 8:35 PM on June 13, 2020

I feel like I've mostly heard this type of phrasing from people from Northern England and Ireland.
posted by ananci at 8:37 PM on June 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

This phrasing was quite common among my older relatives - I grew up hearing it, although it was more commonly stated "I like me a good apple".
All said relatives were from central/eastern North Carolina, and I was born in 1962.
posted by PlantGoddess at 8:56 PM on June 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Just remembered the old-timey cliché phrase "I love a parade!" I feel like I heard that from time to time in old cartoons growing up.
posted by mekily at 8:59 PM on June 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

The cast of Queer Eye love this construction. That's the main place I've heard it recently.
posted by waffleriot at 9:08 PM on June 13, 2020 [5 favorites]

Interesting. This seems to me to be more standard the more abstract the object is. Also with "love" rather than "like" eg for me:
I like an apple = pragmatically weird (though "I like a good apple" is fine.
I love an apple =weird but maybe slightly better
I love a fight = almost fine but probably not what I'd say
I love a revolution = perfectly fine.
posted by lollusc at 9:13 PM on June 13, 2020

And I agree that "I love a parade" is fine
posted by lollusc at 9:13 PM on June 13, 2020

This is super common (in my experience) when talking about fashion. "I love an off the shoulder dress" "I love a bold print".
I agree with mono blanco. If I say "I love a bold print" it doesn't mean I categorically like bold prints, just some bold prints. Therefore it isn't about slang or quirky constructions, but filling a linguistic niche.

I'm a 30 year old white woman from the Midwest if that helps your demographic sleuthing.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 9:27 PM on June 13, 2020 [14 favorites]

I associate this with New Yorkers, such as characters played by Fran Drescher or Larry David. So actually maybe more properly I associate it with an American Jewish accent? It's given with a bit of a shrug, and as shown in your example, is almost always followed by "but..."
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:39 PM on June 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Interesting! This, to me, is a construction that tracks to a fairly broad “common” for lack of a better word British English. “Oooh, go on then, I do love a biscuit!” You hear it a lot from people on the radio and TV as sort of a lowest-common-denominator-but-not-actually-working-class-or-specifically-regional class indicator (as opposed to the RP of of other parts of the media).
posted by Balthamos at 10:55 PM on June 13, 2020 [7 favorites]

I listen to a lot a audiobooks and I've noticed that most of the latest ones say, "Let's get a coffee or go for a coffee" instead of "Get coffee or go for coffee."
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:01 PM on June 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

waffleriot is on to something. The Queer Eye folks have lifted this usage to a whole 'nother level. In search of a linguistic term I would vote for: the Tan France Singular ("I love a carb").
posted by Namlit at 11:25 PM on June 13, 2020 [5 favorites]

So I did a brief search in some linguistic corpora, and I'm finding examples from as far back as the 1920s and 1930s. Interestingly, "I love a parade" was a hit song in the 1930s.

It definitely has become far more frequent over time. It seems to have peaked pretty high in the 1950s, then decreased again, and then risen in the 1980s and 2000s to its current height of popularity, which is more than it has ever been.

Some early examples:
1928: "Britons who dearly love a Lord tut-tutted in dismay last week"
1934: "you must love a joke"
1940: "Mexicans most love a martyr"
1942: "crowds love a fighter"

A corpus search gets a lot of false positives (where the noun phrase doesn't refer to this hypothetical universal thing, but rather to a specific item or person). But a high enough percentage of them is this construction that I think the general distribution patterns I mention above are roughly correct.
posted by lollusc at 11:47 PM on June 13, 2020 [4 favorites]

I also found early examples for "I like a "

1934/08/13 I like a story that fits
1936/08/03 I like a good time
1936/08/20 I like a nice cold glass of beer
1936/06/04 I like a little rebellion now &; then.
1939/01/10 I like a bustle that bends

This seems to follow the same frequency pattern as "I love a "

Note that the reason for not having examples before the 1920s and 1930s is that the corpus I got these from doesn't go back any earlier. I have no reason to believe they began then.
posted by lollusc at 11:53 PM on June 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

I've recently noticed instances of usage of the singular tense for referencing indefinite objects

frustratingly non-Google-able

if you choose to persist in Googling you may have more success in looking for distinctions between the definite and indefinite article, rules for when either or neither is required, and stylistic reasons to violate those rules. this is not an issue of tense; there is no singular tense. so this phrasing may have impeded your searches.

the usage you refer to is both folksy and literary, variously, and people who try to sound folksy when they got their folksy phrases out of books always sound a little off. I personally love a usage of this kind, but when people do it awkwardly it stands out even when not incorrect. this way of writing-speaking abounds online, so it is easy to see it evolve and devolve again in a short span of time.
posted by queenofbithynia at 12:17 AM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

I bet if you think through who/where you're hearing/seeing this using, and check into the media those people are currently consuming (especially the REALLY popular things), you'll discover someone(s) using this that people are picking it up from.
posted by stormyteal at 12:39 AM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Waffleriot and Namlit have picked up on the popularity of the netflix show Queer Eye as a possible propagator of this construction; Tan France is EXACTLY the kind of British media personality I was thinking of in my post. It is really interesting to me to see how this British-ism is making its way into pop-culturally-inflected USAian via a British Asian raised in the North.
posted by Balthamos at 12:47 AM on June 14, 2020 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: @waffleriot and @wellifyouinsist: upon review, it does seem that I hear this a lot more in fashion and design contexts; e.g. "I love a smoky eye."

@Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug: YES, that's the exact tone/emphasis I was trying to describe.

@Balthamos: there does seem to be an implied "do" in these phrases: "I do love a smoky eye." That sounds British to my ears.

@lollusc: thank you for the hardcore research! It seems I really might be hearing it more often nowadays.

@queenofbithynia: thank you for the catch on my misuse of "tense" here - that was sloppy. I did crack my knuckles and get a little more serious on the search front and I came across a discussion at StackExchange that ponders why we use the plural for indefinite objects, which gets to my point about that sounding more "natural." There is an interesting tangent there about why English doesn't have a plural indefinite article if anyone's interested.
posted by majorsteel at 12:50 AM on June 14, 2020

You might want to search using the phrase "generic noun," this seems to be a term linguists use. (Though I suppose this term also applies when talking about the subject of a sentence rather than a direct object, so maybe it's less specific than you intend.) It seems like linguists have been studying this for some time, for example, here's a paper titled "On the generic indefinite article" from 1976 (JSTOR, probably paywalled if you don't have access to a university library, memail me if you're really interested in this specific paper and want a copy). English syntax seems to accept pretty much any type of article for generic nouns, so the differences between what seems normal versus unusual probably just comes down to pragmatics. For example:

1. I love an apple. (Indefinite article)
2. Johannes Gutenberg used the printing press to change the spread of ideas in Europe. (Definite article)
3. Books can open doors to new ideas. (Zero article + plural)

All three examples are generic nouns which are also direct objects. It's interesting that with the zero article I can't think of a good example that doesn't require taking the plural as a direct object, but as a subject they're pretty easy to come up with:

4. War is hell. (Zero article + singular)

So I think English might have a stronger limitation on what kinds of article+number markings are permitted for generic nouns when those nouns are direct objects than when they're subjects, which is kind of interesting. But as far as cases 1-3 I think it probably just comes down to pragmatics as far as which you choose, including dialect and just what's fashionable.
posted by biogeo at 1:03 AM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

It feels good to be creative with language. So good that people get into trouble with it sometimes.
posted by amtho at 2:16 AM on June 14, 2020

I want to echo what wellifyouinsist is saying - this is a trend amongst young, hip, very online people, which has been copied from fashion and beauty industry. I see this phrase a lot in memes, and hear it a lot from my 17 year old niece and 14 year old nephew. I find it to be part of the post-modern, late stage capitalism, meme culture we're in now. They use it singular to indicate that it is a Known Object. You wouldn't say you love smoky eyes, because that doesn't convey that a smoky eye is a known, recognizable concept that follows a culturally agreed-upon set of standards. They are abstract concepts, like brands, memes, "vibes", and aesthetics, that have become solidified in pop culture as recognizable and repeated motifs.
posted by FirstMateKate at 6:09 AM on June 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

To my ear, "I like an apple" suggests liking the experience of a having a single apple, more or less an abbreviated version of something like "I like an apple after lunch". It would exclude liking sliced apples on a pork chop, or liking apple turnovers both of which would be included with "I like apples."
posted by SemiSalt at 6:10 AM on June 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Biogeo has the best answer from a linguistics perspective. I believe the attempts here to trace the paths of spreading or popularity are mostly examples of the recency illusion.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:33 AM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am very lazy, and also not very hip, but I’m going to suggest that the phrase in its current meme-y form wants a first person plural. As in, “We love a soda.” (Although more likely: “We love an ethereal moment.”) A quick google of “We love a” points to James Charles and I don’t really know who that is but I think they’re quite famous. Also Queer Eye as above.

I definitely think of this as a gay/queer/fashion thing but that’s maybe my milieu. 🤷🏻‍♂️
posted by hapticactionnetwork at 10:18 AM on June 14, 2020

Just ran across an example that isn’t first person in The NY Times: “These Cookies Love A Substitution“
posted by hapticactionnetwork at 10:41 AM on June 14, 2020

I hear this often on Doctor Who (the reboot), e.g., The Doctor will say "I like a little shop." So I guess that's another vote for UK and/or BBC English.
posted by tuesdayschild at 2:40 PM on June 14, 2020

I would've thought a famous usage would be "Everybody loves a landlord" in "Master of the House," from Les Miserables.
posted by praemunire at 3:00 PM on June 14, 2020

I grew up around a pretty specific regional accent where I was not exposed to this phrasing, so remember distinctly first encountering it among young urban-ish often-white, mostly-queer people when moved to California in 1998.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:15 PM on June 14, 2020