Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: A majority of

Ho ragione a pensare che nella frase che segue "A majority" *non* può
essere sostituito da "The majority", come si direbbe in italiano? (La
maggioranza degli americani...)
A majority of Americans favor the confirmation of federal appeals court
judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the US Supreme Court ...

 maggioranza degli americani...)
Why not?
Kiuhnm

 Kiuhnm
Rovescio la tua domanda: perché diciamo in italiano "la" maggioranza, come
se ce ne fosse una sola possibile? ;D
-- 

 se ce ne fosse una sola possibile? ;D
Because we are referring to the biggest majority, that is, the set of 
all the people who belong to a majority (regarding what we are talking 
about, obviously).
For instance, if we have ten people U = {p1, ..., p10} where S = {p1, 
p2, p3, p4, p5, p6, p7} are fair-haired and those in U but not in S are 
not, then /the/ majority S of people are fair-haired, while {p1, p3, p4, 
p5, p6, p7} is just /a/ majority of fair-haired people.
There is no such a rule, but mine is an answer to your question ;-)
All I know is that "a majority" and "the majority" are both used in both 
American and British English (I've had a look at the Collins Dictionary).
Kiuhnm


"The majority" is fine, afaIk.
In fact, "a majority" sounds self-contradictory to me, how can there be more 
that one majority?
"A majority of Italians like tea, another one coffee."  mmm
I suppose it must just stand for "many" 

 British English 
Nella frase che ho proposto, "A majority of Americans favor...", o in frasi
d'altro tipo?
Secondo San Google,
Results 1 - 10 of about 9,230 for "a majority of Americans favor". 
Results 1 - 10 of about 520 for "the majority of Americans favor". 
-- 

"Enrico C" ha scritto...

I don't know if both are fine, but in the particular case you
quoted "a majority" seems to be the only appropriate choice because
two majorities are compared [a majority of Americans favor (..) an
even larger proportion believe (etc)], somewhat accordance with:
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/0201.html
In any case, if you use "San Google" to compare just
"a majority of" with "the majority of", you'll see that the latter
is dramatically more used.
bye
Gennaro 

 is dramatically more used.
Un confronto limitato a quelle parole includerebbe anche frasi ben diverse
da quella considerata.
Per es.
"He led Labour to victory in 1964, with a majority of four seats."  
-- 

 wrote in message 
news:fgikjb$18q$1...@nnrp-beta.newsland.it...

??
Tea-liking Italians and coffee-liking Italians aren't mutually exclusive 
sets (logically , anyway) . I should think the number of possible majorities 
of Italians is very large (if the population of Italy is 50 million , then I 
suppose it's all the combinations of 25,000,001 in 50 million plus all the 
combinations in 50 million of every intermediate integer up to 49,999,999 ).
'A majority' simply means 'more than half' (not just 'many').
It's true that the sentence 'A majority of Italians like tea , another one 
coffee' wouldn't ever be used by a native speaker (because the structure 
suggests exclusive sets) . You'd have to say something like ' A majority of 
Italians like tea , and a majority of Italians like coffee , but only seven 
Italians like both.'
In general , 'a majority' and 'the majority' are often interchangeable ; but 
I would say that 'a majority' is likely to suggest a smaller proportion than 
'the majority' ; that is , 'a majority' is more than half , but not 
necessarily a lot more , whereas 'the majority' tends to suggest a larger 
proportion (='most' ; 'most' could of course mean just 50.01% , but usually 
suggests much more) .
Mike