The Grammar of English Grammars, page 528 by Gould Brown
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its noun. Nor has the indefinite article any variation of form, except the change from an to a, which has been made for the sake of brevity or euphony.
OBS. 11.--As an or a conveys the idea of unity, of course it applies to no other than nouns of the singular number. An eagle is one eagle, and the plural word eagles denotes more than one; but what could possibly be meant by "ans eagles," if such a phrase were invented? Harris very strangely says, "The Greeks have no article correspondent to an or a, but supply its place by a NEGATION of their article. And even in English, where the article a cannot be used, as in plurals, its force is exprest by the same NEGATION."--_Harris's Hermes_, p. 218. What a sample of grammar is this! Besides several minor faults, we have here a nonentity, a NEGATION of the Greek article, made to occupy a place in language, and to express _force!_ The force of what? Of a plural an or _a,!_ of such a word as ans or _aes!_ The error of the first of these sentences, Dr. Blair has copied entire into his eighth lecture.
OBS. 12.--The following rules of agreement, though found in many English grammars, are not only objectionable with respect to the sense intended, but so badly written as to be scarcely intelligible in any sense: 1. "The article a or an agrees with nouns in the singular number _only, individually, or collectively_: as, A Christian, an infidel, a score, a thousand." 2. "The definite article the may agree with nouns in the singular AND[135] _plural number_: as, The garden, the houses, the stars."--_Murray's Gram._, 8vo, p. 170; 12mo, 139; _Fish's Murray_, 98; _a Teacher's_, 45. For the purpose of preventing any erroneous construction of the articles, these rules are utterly useless; and for the purpose of syntactical parsing, or the grammatical resolution