Hi, Alexander! Recently you wrote in a message to Anton Shepelev:
I seems to me that "THE four long House tables" are logically
connected with the fifth table.
To an old schoolteacher they definitely are. Hogwarts is a boarding school, where the teachers must keep an eye on the students at mealtimes. :-))
The author probably could say that the staff sat at A table
in the hall corner.
In your original citation you said "along one side of a fifth table" l... which makes sense to me. As a Canadian whose family was of modest means, I never attended a British-style private school. I've read fictional accounts of how schoolgirls clambered down the ivy at night to solve mysteries, though, and I've had enough experience with English ivy to find it quite believable that it could support the weight of a few teeny boppers after +\-400 years... [grin].
I don't have enough personal experience with such matters to realize immediately that there must be five tables altogether unless the author says so in advance. OTOH "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (see below) will be recognized by many native speakers of English because it's the name of a traditional song.
But she made the staff table unique. We have the four tables
for the students and the fifth table for the staff.
The staff table is unique because the folks seated at right angles to the kids can't have their view blocked by folks on the other side of the table.
I'd reserve "the" for situations where there is an obvious accounting of numbers. When I sing "On the first day of Christmas" I understand there are twelve altogether & what we refer to as Twelfth Night is what Russians call the Feast of the Nativity because you guys prefer to use a Julian calendar.... :-Q
I saw five children playing in the court yard.
Okay. Four of them did blah blah while the fifth did something else. And I agree that an article may or may not be needed with "referee" here. :-)
--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
* Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)