Which grammar is correct or all correct?
I have never seen "a" snow VS I have never seen snow
I've inputted both sentences to the Google search and found results as following
I have never seen a snow (About 389,000 results)
I have never seen snow (About 95,300 results)
I have never seen the snow (About 721,000 results)
Should I need to add the article or not and why ???
Thanks
PS:
The same problem has happened as the following sentences
I have never seen sea
I have never seen a sea
I have never seen the sea
Best Answer
I would consider that
is technically incorrect, but could be considered an elided version of
I suspect that google results are distorted by the presence of forms like this in the texts being searched. I would regard
as better than the elided form, although it is a bit ambiguous: does it mean seen any snow at all, or a fall of snow. The unelided form above is IMO better yet.
A comment asks about the use of "the snow" whoich was not in the original question.
seems at least dubious if not wrong. "the snow" should mean some particular or specific snow, but none is specified or implied. Additional context might make this work. This construction could i suppose be used with "the snow" meaning snow in general, in parallel to
But that construction, while very common with certain specific nouns ("the sea", "the moon", "the world", "the flesh", "the marketplace") is not normally used more generally. This seems a matter of practice, i can't see a clear rule for where this sort of use of "the" is acceptable.
Of course "the snow" can and should be used relating to particular snow:
but that is a quite different form.