Misunderstood albeit clear explanations + reasoning versus proof

Question

I would like to know whether the explanation given here: explanation is clear and unambiguous. It seems to me that the comments leveled against it are not fair.

If I say in English: "It would seem that the reasoning here is A, B, C", that that phrase provides an explanation that is not based on any particular standard but it attempts to show the logic behind a particular usage might be based on what is standard grammar. It implies one is explaining what is found in usage and not what is prescriptively "mandated". And in this particular case, there is really no way to prove my opinion.

I am going to give the example again: - US GAAP (US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles)

That is a fact. What could possibly be the explanation about why one does not use the determiner the as in "The US GAAP" as part of the name for this set of principles?? It seems reasonable to me that the reasoning here is that since those writing about this know what the abbreviation stands for and those who created them did not put "the" in their name, it's because these are principles. And plural nouns in English don't require a "the". In the same way as any other general statement: Apples are good for you. Horses neigh. Laws are made to be followed.

And how could this, in any case, be "proven"? I don't think it can. However, it does cohere with English usage.

There is no way to "prove" why the original creators of the US GAAP [the is not part of the title here] didn't make the word "the" part of the title.

I found that I had to repeat my reasoning about three times, and still the comments to me were repeated over and over. I asked for mod intervention and did not receive any help. Meanwhile, there has been no other effort to help the OP and the question remains open.

Not everything can be proven. But facts (the fact US GAAP does not contain the determiner THE) can be reasonably explained. So, my question remains: what does one do when a question requires a reasonable and reasoned explanation because there is not way to "prove it"?

Answer 1

As for this tidbit:

I found that I had to repeat my reasoning about three times, and still the comments to me were repeated over and over. I asked for mod intervention and did not receive any help.

There are quite a few upvoted comments in that dialogue, but, as of this writing, none of the upvotes are on your comments. Perhaps you are looking at this backwards. Maybe your answer is faulty, and the community in general agrees with the person who tried to point that out politely.

As you are aware, there is already one recent meta question asserting that you are prone to make "incorrect and categorical statements” on SE, ones that could easily mislead a learner. Yet another glaring example is found in your answer (in bold print, no less):

The reasoning here, therefore, is: A plural noun doesn't take "the”.

Then, in your comments, you seem to contradict your own assertion, by saying:

I did not say that all plural nouns never take "the”.

You can argue this three times in your comments, you can argue it again here in meta. None of your arguments change the fact that you made yet another “incorrect and categorical statement” and then tried to defend it instead of correct it. In other words, maybe you didn’t mean to say:

No plural noun ever takes “the”

but that’s how your answer reads, and I assume that’s why it has attracted its downvotes.

I don’t understand why it is so difficult to simply say, “Oh, I guess that didn’t come out right at all; I should fix that and make it more clear,” instead of contending that the problem is with the reader and not your answer:

You are trying to make me say something which I didn't say at all. I said it is the reasoning here. What I said is useful and correct. I was very, very careful in answering, precisely so the type of misreading you are making of my answer could not be made. But you misread that fact.
_{(emphasis in original)}

Not to beat a dead horse, but the reasoning here reminds me of our conversation about fruits, where your answer plainly states:

In everyday English (not biology, botany or Biblical contexts), the word fruit is never plural.

and then you later chided me in the comments by saying:

You did not read my answer carefully enough. In every day [sic] conversation (about fruit) the plural is never used.

Um, your answer doesn’t say, “In everyday conversation,” it says (in bold print), “In everyday English.”

Perhaps the most revealing (and amusing) part of your meta question is in its title:

Misunderstood albeit clear explanations

If an explanation is “clear”, then it should not be “misunderstood”. If it’s “misunderstood”, perhaps it isn’t as clear as you think it is.

I don’t think the problem here is a community that can’t follow your "clear and unambiguous” reasoning. I think it’s simply that your reasoning isn’t nearly as faultless, clear, or unambiguous as you seem to think it is.

A less argumentative spirit would go a long way here. Horses may neigh, and apples may be good for you, but the arguments are getting wearisome.

Answer 2

The problem was not that the answer did not have a rigorous formal proof of why "US GAAP" has no article. Some sort of argument is generally required, yes, perhaps going as far as citations of textbooks, but an answer that does nothing but make unsubstantiated assertions can still be decent if those assertions are in fact correct and helpful.

The problem was, instead, that it gave a very simplistic rule, one which could not be correctly applied as stated to all possible cases, and then neither qualified it further to make it apply only in the cases it could rightly be applied, nor gave any sort of argument (never mind citation) for why in fact it was correct as stated. (Unless the argument was literally that the drafters of the GAAP sincerely believed that plural nouns in English did not take the definite article and therefore established a usage pattern that avoided ever using "the" in front of the name. This seems very hard to believe, and certainly would need citation; it's also not clear why their mistaken understanding should really govern the usage of English speakers in general.)

The form of your comments was basically "X phenomenon exists. Theory Y predicts that it exists. Therefore theory Y is correct." This is invalid logic. The rule or theory or guideline you use must not only explain the issue at hand, but do so without accidentally "explaining" things that simply are not so. And however the guideline in the answer was formulated, it couldn't be correct:

• "Plural nouns do not take articles" would be falsified by the grammatical statements I put in my first comment.
• "Principles and standards are two particular words that do not take articles when used as plural nouns" would be falsified by a similar grammatical statement, like "The principles of this website are very similar to the ones Stack Exchange as a whole espouses".

I don't know what set of rules you mentally use to navigate the maze of articles and plurality rules in English. It is quite possibly at least as good as mine, and almost certainly perfectly adequate for nearly all purposes in English. But I don't believe the answer correctly summarizes the important rules that you yourself would in fact follow to figure this out. Rather, it snips the first small piece that came to light and leaves it at that, with the result that a learner who follows the advice will get "US GAAP" right, but a lot of other stuff wrong. This is understandable, since fluent and especially native speakers tend to have considerable trouble extracting and properly formulating the full set of rules they're actually using for grammar. (See the entire history of formal English grammar for just how hard this actually is.) But, crucially, an answer on ELL that cannot manage this just isn't going to make the cut. "First, do no harm."