was NX01 ever referred to as 'The' Enterprise?

[Pavonis]

The Atlantic, The Pacific, etc
The Mediterranean, The Baltic, The Caspian
The Mississippi, The Amazon, The Nile
The Sahara, The Gobi
The Rockies, The Andes, The Himalayas
The South, The Mid-West, The Mid-East, The Rhineland
The Amazon (rainforest this time)
The Big Apple, The Windy City, The Outback

Those are still proper nouns, so yes it IS that hard.

"Going on a road trip from Chicago, driving through mid-west, and staying a night at Grand Canyon before backpacking in Mojave."

Can you honestly say that sentence is either proper or natural?

Yes, that sentence sounds proper to me. That's how I'd say it, at any rate.

Not that I really care anymore (c'est la vie), but I try to stay sharp on grammar because I have to write. So let's examine your examples, and going by my (sometimes imperfect) memory....

The Atlantic, The Pacific, etc: the modifies ocean, not the name, which specifies which ocean.

The Mediterranean, The Baltic, The Caspian: the modifies sea, not the name, which specifies which sea.

The Mississippi, The Amazon, The Nile: the modifies river, not the name, which specifies which river.

The Sahara, The Gobi: the modifies desert, not the name, which specifies which desert.

The Rockies, The Andes, The Himalayas: the modifies mountains, not the name, which specifies which mountain.

The South, The Mid-West, The Mid-East, The Rhineland: Those aren't even real names. They're just regional descriptions.

The Amazon (rainforest this time): the modifies rainforest, not the name, which specifies which rainforest.

The Big Apple, The Windy City, The Outback: Nicknames.

 

[Christopher]

But then there's The Hague. Nobody calls it Hague. Language is not regular. "Rules" are just attempts to describe usage.

 

[Pavonis]

The Hague - is that English? What do they call it in Dutch? I neither claim expertise in nor have particular interest in the grammar of foreign languages.

As for grammar being a matter of describing usage rather than prescribing usage, I agree. There have been too many people rigidly holding to the prescriptive model of grammar. Yet without holding to some rules of grammar, what's the point? People are going to abuse language so badly that communication could become rather difficult if they aren't corrected occasionally. The descriptive role of grammar is too limiting. What's the point of having grammar at all if we're just going to let people speak however they want and ignore any rules? That's chaos.

 

[Christopher]

The Hague - is that English? What do they call it in Dutch?

Den Haag, which means "The Hague" (or literally, "The Wood"). We only use the article in English because it's used in Dutch.

As for grammar being a matter of describing usage rather than prescribing usage, I agree. There have been too many people rigidly holding to the prescriptive model of grammar. Yet without holding to some rules of grammar, what's the point? People are going to abuse language so badly that communication could become rather difficult if they aren't corrected occasionally. The descriptive role of grammar is too limiting. What's the point of having grammar at all if we're just going to let people speak however they want and ignore any rules? That's chaos.

But what has that got to do with the topic of this thread? We've already established exhaustively that there is plenty of precedent for using ship names without a definite article. It's a common enough usage in real life that it's incorrect to argue that it's an error, or that the producers of Enterprise were just trying to annoy TOS fans, or something ridiculous like that. It's hardly advocating chaos to acknowledge that a well-established precedent exists. It's just doing the research and presenting the results, which is pretty darn orderly.

 

[Pavonis]

My point was more general - that grammar that is only descriptive would mean that there are effectively no rules to grammar, since any use would be "correct" as long as the meaning was conveyed. And yet, at a certain point, the lack of rules would eventually make communication more difficult than necessary just because there will always be some people who can't be bothered to learn and apply the rules.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, but, again, what does that contribute to this specific discussion?

 

[Pavonis]

Nothing. I thought this discussion had drifted off-topic, as they are wont to do. If you don't like it, you needn't respond anymore. I won't either, and then the thread will drift to the bottom, like a feather floating to the ground....

 

[GalaxyX]

I didn't read the whole thread, so I don't know if anyone else mentioned this.

Enterprise is not a thing, or an individual. By definition, "Enterprise" means "a project or complex undertaking".

So it's correct to call it "The Enterprise" because it's referring to a collection of processes to create something.

The whole idea that "The Enterprise" means "The undertaking of humanity to explore the unknown".

Voyager on the other hand, is an individual. A "Voyager" is an individual who goes to explore or travel to a different location.

Calling it "The Voyager" doesn't really make sense, although it can still be used, just sounds redundant.

Calling the Enterprise "Enterprise" is trying to turn the word into having a singular meaning, like it's a person or a thing rather than an idea. It would be like instead of saying "The Undertaking", to say "Undertaking"

I hated every time I heard "we're taking Enterprise somewhere"

I feel sorry for the cast.

 

[Christopher]

^No, it isn't. As I've pointed out already with evidentiary support (see post #54), there is abundant real-world precedent for using ship names without the definite article, just as there is precedent for using them with the article. The literal meaning of an individual ship name is completely irrelevant to the usage. It's far more general than that. The rule in commercial shipping seems to be to use an article, but in naval usage, some say there should never be an article attached to the name, while others say that large ships should usually be referred to with an article while smaller craft generally don't use it. It is never, ever broken down based on the literal definition of the ship's name.

 

[Pavonis]

I hated every time I heard "we're taking Enterprise somewhere"

I feel sorry for the cast.

What a life you lead, to "hate" the lack of a definite article and to feel pity for the cast of a show that probably haven't given this issue any thought at all.

 

[WarpCore]

^No, it isn't. As I've pointed out already with evidentiary support (see post #54), there is abundant real-world precedent for using ship names without the definite article, just as there is precedent for using them with the article. The literal meaning of an individual ship name is completely irrelevant to the usage. It's far more general than that. The rule in commercial shipping seems to be to use an article, but in naval usage, some say there should never be an article attached to the name, while others say that large ships should usually be referred to with an article while smaller craft generally don't use it. It is never, ever broken down based on the literal definition of the ship's name.

Star Trek does not consistently follow any rules based on size. The writers seem to only follow the "whatever sounds right" rule.

As already established, Voyager almost never referred to the ship as "the Voyager", but Ransom's ship was consistently reference as "the Equinox".

Usage (single episode),
the Equinox: 31 times
Equinox: 4 times

Two of those 4 are addressing the ship, 1 is the distress call "the Federation Starship Equinox. We're under attack.", and 1 drops "the" to make the alien of the week, Ankari, sound more caveman and hostile.

Voyager treatment of Equinox is roughly the same treatment TOS gives Enterprise. Anytime the ship is being personified by someone talking to it or for it, the article is dropped.

TOS breaks the no "the USS shipname" rule, uses the article when it feels like, and drops the article when it feels like, possibly more than people realized.
Usage (3 seasons)
The USS Enterprise: 24
The Enterprise: 358
Enterprise: 419 (to Enterprise: 110 Enterprise to: 46)

TNG
The USS Enterprise: 28
USS Enterprise: 17
The Enterprise: 910
Enterprise: 525 (to Enterprise: 77 Enterprise to: 27)

DS9
The USS Defiant: 5
USS Defiant: 3
The Defiant: 309
Defiant: 104 (to Defiant: 20 Defiant to: 5)

Voy
The USS Voyager: 3
USS Voyager: 14
The Voyager: 33 (most were phrases ending in crew, away team, etc)
Voyager: 1510 (to Voyager: 228 Voyager to: 75)

Ent
The USS Enterprise: 0
USS Enterprise: 0
The Enterprise: 15 (not all referring to the ship, like Voyager)
Enterprise: 737 (to Enterprise: 102 Enterprise to: 28)

Ent treats Columbia the same as Enterprise, but doesn't give that same honor to the Intrepid a couple times it's needed for a conversation.


So I think it's safe to say that Star Trek canon is telling us in the future people will gradually think more and more of starships as either structures or collective bodies rather than military vessels, except in the cases when personifying the ship either through comm usage or inclusion of bio-neural circuitry. Canon also seems to imply that Earth ships are going to be Really popular and everyone is going to want to talk to us rather we call first, regardless of how many times we've heard "hail them." Or simply that the writers less often chose to have people speak for their entire ship, but I thought the consistency of the to/from numbers was neat.

 

[GalaxyX]

^I'm shocked someone actually kept count of this! wow!

 

[WarpCore]

Didn't keep count. Those are estimates from searching (grep) the transcripts and doing word or line counts. I tried to throw out stuff like scene descriptions, but I wouldn't call those numbers a definitive count by any means.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Well, there was always this...