Which version is correct?
In the first, 'the' is not appropriate; there may well be other cases of 'being angry'."Being mad is a special case of being angry in general."
"Being manodepressive is a special case of schizophrenia." (Have no clue if this is actually true).
Would this make sense?
Not necessarily.X is a special case of Y.
This implies that Y has many realizations and X is one of them.
Not necessarily. We could speak of 'a unique case' (45 examples in COCA). Look at the 35 examples of 'the unique case' in COCA and see how they are used.If there are many cases of something, i..e Y, then one should use "a", but if there is only one modification (or case) then one should use "the".
Is this correct?
No. There are perhaps many special cases - this is merely one of them.For example, this should be correct I presume
"The circle is the special case of the elipse."
the = to emphasize class; hope this usage of "the" is correct.
Since there is more or less only one way of making an elipse into a circle. Right?
In the first, 'the' is not appropriate; there may well be other cases of 'being angry'...
I used those words of one example. You have rephrased my words as a generalisation. That doesn't get us anywhere.Now I am confused. Why did you say the above then? To say it in another way: If there are other special cases of something then do not not use "the". Isn't that the message?
Surely, you mean X is a class of objects? What you wrote doesn't make sense if X is just one object.okay, I think I can define the problem better.
Assume that we have an object call it X, and I will label it with integer numbers.
X(1), X(2), X(3), ...
Assume that X(1) and X(2) are identical with Y
X(1) = Y
X(2) = Y
Can I say that Y is the special case of X?
Without any further context, (1) and (3) are the ones. You'd want to use "the" if you were talking about a special case that had been previously specified. It doesn't matter that Z has just one element. What could matter is how many possible special cases there are.This was wonderful! Now I can formulate it even better. Please bear with me...
Let X be a class of objects with elements {X1, X2, X3, X4}
and Let Y be a class of objects {Y1,Y2,Y3} and Y is a subset of X such that
Y1=X1, Y2=X2, Y3=X3
Also, let Z be a class with just one element Z = {Z1} where
Z1=X4
Which statements are correct (and why, if not too hard to explain):
(1) "Y is a special case of X."
(2) "Y is the special case of X."
(3) "Z is a special case of X."
(4) "Z is the special case of X."
It wouldn't be wrong. "The" is justified here because "with X=P" specifies. As in"Thus the PARNES method is the special case of the XARNES method with X=P."
Meaning that XARNES is a class of methods {MARNES, PARNES, TARNES, QARNES, ...}
and PARNES is one element in the class. I presume that it would be wrong to say "a" but I am not sure.
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