Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31981697-20170722123329/@comment-27136653-20171024202623

Because there is only one trophy sprite, and one dog sprite. It's just that the trophy is used in two different contexts. Once for the fictional events in the game, and once for a real life event. So it's obvious they can't be the same. But it's not so obvious with the Annoying Dog. Toby never stated that the Annoying Dog was anyone BUT him. And since we never got to learn the identity of the one that's in the game, it is logical to assume that it's the same dog, that it's just Toby inserting his avatar into his own game, for fun, as a neat reference. Do you understand? And there is no "211X" Toby, if we don't even know what year that is. The entire room is a reference to the creation of the game, which is obvious. So it is nonsensical to assume that a paradox is present in the first place. But since we can't just disregard the FACT that this is a reference to the creation of Undertale, the most we can do is dismiss it as a part of the canon altogether. I keep telling you this.

"What I'm saying is if they weren't the only contributor, they DIDN'T do a whole thing."

FOR THE FOURTH TIME, YOU MORON, there is no "the" in that sentence, only an "a".

What you're describing is the situation where the "the" would be used. Yes, I do understand that we do not know which game is the line talking about, but if the word "a" is used, we also do not know whether or not there were any other contributors, besides the one that we know of already.

If we were to use the "the" word, the line would be clearly saying that the dog made the entire game all by himself. But if we use the "a" word, the meaning of the following line: "he didn't make a whole game" becomes: "he didn't make a fully playable, standalone game."

That's the meaning of that line. It is only referencing the fact that the dog made a fully-playable, standalone game. That he didn't make just an extension/improvement to something that already existed. It does absolutely not even hint at any signs of credit given. From that line, it is impossible to read whether the dog did it all by himself, or whether he had any help.

If you want to construct a sentence like that, in which it would be clearly obvious who made what and how much of it, you NEED to use the "the" word, to reference the object. In such case, "the whole game" becomes synonymous with "the entire game" and "the whole game all by himself". But not when you have the "a" in there instead.

In THAT case, the only thing it is saying is how much of a game the game is. Is it a fraction of a game? No, it's a fully playable game. In this case the phrase "a whole" is referencing an amount. It is referencing the amount of a game there is, NOT the amount of stuff that the subject did. Since for that, you need to reference to the object using the "the" article.

Unfortunately, that is clearly impossible, since such article wasn't used. But oops! That also means that the line can't be saying that whatever the dog did, he did all by himself, since you can't just change the used article for the sake of keeping one thing gramatically true, and expecting other things not to change.

Let me say it again, saying "he made a whole game" implies that this "someone" made some whole game. The meaning of this line implies much more this, than what you're saying, that it implies that this "someone" did it all by himself too.

And now let's analyze this from Toby's point of view. Why would he choose to use the "a" article? Because he didn't want to be specific on which game it was? Yes, exactly. The narrator said "the dog programmed a whole game." So it's actually from the narrator's point of view. The narrator doesn't know what game it is, and so he uses the word "a". Next, the word "whole". Why would Toby choose to use this word? Maybe because it was something special? As if the dog never made a full-fledged, stand-alone game before? Again, yes, that's the reason.

And that's it! The only two pieces of information that this line is giving us is that we don't know what this game is, but we know that it's whole, finished, and that the dog made it. It doesn't say whether he did it alone, or if he had any help, it simply just doesn't mention that. So, we CAN'T just assume that that's what the line is saying. I know it's tempting, to say that the line implies the dog did it all by himself, but unfortunately, there's no factual proof for this. You're just assuming the meaning of this line.