amikityuk wrote:
I would appreciate if someone could explain to me how "the" changes the meaning here, perhaps with another example.
"She is the most dedicated gardener on the block, every day watering
the more than 50 plants in her yard".
"She is the most dedicated gardener on the block, every day watering more than 50 plants in her yard".
"She is the most dedicated gardener on the block, every day watering more than
the 50 plants in her yard".
I understand that the third one means that she is watering not only those 50 plants but more.
But 1st vs 2nd puzzles me, look very close, except "the more than 50 plans" sound awkward.
KyleWiddison wrote:
This is not a matter of correct or incorrect, it's an issue of meaning. When you say "watering the more than 50 plants" you are stating that she watered her plants and there happens to be more than 50 (agreeing with koolpraps modifier comment above). When you remove "the" and say "watering more than 50 plants" the meaning is changed significantly. Now you don't have a real sense of how many plants she has (perhaps thousands?) and so you don't know if she watered them all - you just know she watered more than 50.
KW
We're going a bit beyond GMAT territory here, but I'll give it a shot. I'll also use a different example sentence to make it a bit clearer. I'm going to swap out 'more than 50' for the word 'many'. These words serve exactly the same purpose, but I think it's easier to 'hear' the difference when you use a shorter, more common word rather than an awkward-sounding phrase like 'more than 50'.
1. My daughter invited the many students in her kindergarten class to her birthday party.
2. My daughter invited many students in her kindergarten class to her birthday party.
In the first sentence, she invited all of the students in her class. In the second sentence, she invited many of them, but maybe not all of them. 'The' is a
definite article; definite articles are used for a lot of different things in English, but one reason they're used is to express this particular distinction. 'The many students' means that you're talking about all of the students; 'many students' means you're talking about a lot of students, but it might not be all of the students in the room.
Similarly, 'the more than 50 plants' means you're talking about all of the plants; 'more than 50 plants' means you're talking about a particular number of plants, but it might not be all of them.