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The rose of this kind is called "Princess Diana"

hirashin

Sempai
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8 Apr 2004
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Dear native English speakers,

Would both be correct?
(a) Roses of this kind are called "Princess Diana".
(b) The rose of this kind is called "Princess Diana"

Hirashin
 
(a) is fine. (b) is better with 'A rose of this...'. General statements are usually OK both in the singular or plural.
e.g.., A cat has 4 legs, and Cats have 4 legs are both fine.
 
In formal language, you sometimes use "the + noun" as a general statement. For example, you can say "The horse is a useful animal." or something like that. Is it that you can't use this kind of "the" in (b)?
 
In formal language, you sometimes use "the + noun" as a general statement. For example, you can say "The horse is a useful animal." or something like that. Is it that you can't use this kind of "the" in (b)?

Fair point, and your horse example is fine.
I don't like "the" in your sentence because it is followed by 'of this kind'.
In fact, I Googled "a flower of this kind" and got 9.5 million hits. Then I Googled "the flower of this kind" (the quote marks here are important because they mean that only the exact phrase appears) and only got 5 hits!
I think from that, you can conclude that you should always have 'a' or 'an' before 'of this kind'.
 
Thank you for your time, Lothor. I appreciate your help.
That's new information to me. I'll make a mental note of it.
 
Thank you for your time, Lothor. I appreciate your help.
That's new information to me. I'll make a mental note of it.

hirashin,

Don't just make a mental note of it--write it down and/or print out @Lothor 's reply.

please compare the similar suggestion for using google some weeks ago:
(September 2nd, 2016)

Good find! But I still don't think "more and more..." improves it enough to make the "is resembling" acceptable. (E.g., I'd suggest alternatives (alternative wordings) if I rec'd it on a student paper.)

Some other comparable verbs in the same sentence sound better to me than resemble. (add "more and more as the years go by" or something similar to each)

He takes after his father ~
He is taking after his father ~

He looks like his father ~
He is looking like his father ~

For the last pair it seems to sound better if the "more and more" is moved:

He looks more and more like ~
He is looking more and more like ~

***
Some of the examples in your link sound okay:

1. It's looking more and more like it's going to rain.
2. As I read that novel, {I find that} I'm liking it less and less.
3. The mixture [is] smelling sweeter and sweeter as it warms up.


1 and 3 are acceptable. 2 sounds like a modern (millennial?) usage.

You can use google to get a sense of how common a word string is. (hits) Though not all of those hits are in the particular grammatical context at issue here, I think the sheer lack of hits for "is resembling" does reflect how rarely it is used in the progressive, and how much its grammatical usage differs from other verbs/expressions that I might offer as a better phrasing of the same idea.

"is resembling" (46,300)
"is taking" (102,000,000)
"is looking" (208,000,000)
"is smelling" (258,000,000)
"is liking" (416,000)
 
Thank you for the suggestion, johnnyG. I often use Google advanced search, but it didn't occur to me that I should google "the flower of this kind".
 
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