Hello Forumosans,
In the following sentence:
“What is most important is to find the type of boss that matches your own personality”
How would you explain that adding “the” in front of “most” is not needed?
Thank you!
I’ll guess that ‘most’ in your sentence is not a superlative; therefore, ‘the’ is not used.
It could be intended as a superlative though. However “important” isn’t modifying a noun there, and “the” is omitted as a result. That’s not any kind of rule; there’s a good summary here:
forum.wordreference.com/threads/ … t-11425282
I probably wouldn’t use “the” in this sentence, but the whole thing is not constructed well.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”]It could be intended as a superlative though. However “important” isn’t modifying a noun there, and “the” is omitted as a result. That’s not any kind of rule; there’s a good summary here:
forum.wordreference.com/threads/ … t-11425282
I probably wouldn’t use “the” in this sentence, but the whole thing is not constructed well.[/quote]
Yes what Tempo said. “the” is not attached to “most”, it is attached to the noun that “most” is describing. If you change your sentence to have a noun, you have to put “the”: The most important thing is to find the type of boss…
Using “most” without “the” is not an exception to any grammatical rule. Using “the” or another article or indicator with a singular noun is the grammatical rule.