@Zetherin,
Zetherin;132302 wrote:But why is "I believe in the sun" comparable to "I believe in money", but "I believe in sun" not comparable to "I believe in money"?
In post 1, you pointed out that we use "I believe in-" with some things but not others. You said that it's "interesting" and "strange" that there are some things about which we dont say "I believe in-" and other things about which we do say this.
Zetherin;131845 wrote:I also find it interesting those things we never use "I believe in" with, constrasted with those things we would use "I believe in" with. We would never say things like, "I believe in car", or "I believe in sun", or "I believe in computer". But we would say, "I believe in money". Most strange.
But these sentences are not distinguished by the nature of things that we might profess to believe in and things that we never profess to believe in, the sentences are distinguished grammatically.
In the given sentence form, 'I believe in
X', there is nothing special about money, this sentence works for any uncountable noun, and even though it might sound eccentric, we can easily imagine someone saying "I believe in milk", "I believe in lemon juice", "I believe in chewing-gum", "I believe in garlic", "I believe in tennis", etc. Equally, if the grammar is conventionalised for countable nouns, it's easy to imagine speakers saying sentences like "I believe in the bicycle", "I believe in bicycles", "I believe in the child", "I believe in children", "I believe in the computer", "I believe in computers", "I believe in the black hole", "I believe in black holes", etc.
Your examples didn't illustrate a class of thing about which nobody would profess belief, they illustrated an unconventional grammatical form that wouldn't generally be used. So, there is nothing strange or interesting about objects of belief, illustrated by these examples.
kennethamy;132296 wrote:welcome.
Thanks.
