Why "be king", not "be a king"? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

Since "a king" uses an indefinite article, it suggests that he may become any one of a number of kings. In most cases where a person may become king, there is only one king in the political structure he inhabits. For instance, if he is in the line of succession for the English throne, he probably cannot become king of France or Denmark without marrying into that royal family. The equivalent phrase to "I can't wait to be king" would use a definite article - it could be rephrased as "I can't wait to be the king", since there is only one kingship he is eligible to accede to.

Solution 2:

Context is the key.

1. An heir apparent, next in line, may say: "I can't wait to be king".
2. A candidate running for President can say: "Wait till I become President!"
3. Anybody wishing he were a king, would say: "I'd like to be a king".
4. Same goes for other contexts, such as in this one: "Think like a king!"

Solution 3:

King can either be a bare role NP, or part of a larger NP (NP is shorthand for noun phrase). A bare role NP is a singular noun that can occur without a determiner, in other words without a word like "a" or "the". These types of word almost always describe some kind of role, function, office or title. Other examples might be Managing Director, Prime Minister, or Head of Sales.

Of course, nearly always these nouns can also occur as the head of normal noun phrases, where, if they are singular, they must be accompanied by a determiner such as "the", "a" or "my", for example.

The choice between "the" and "a" or other determiners in such cases, is exactly the same as it is for any other noun. In relation to the word "king", it will probably depend on whether one is considering this king as one of a number of kings, in which case the preferred determiner would be "a" - or whether this king is being viewed as the only king, in which case we would favour "the".

Now, you may be given the impression from this that nouns occurring as bare role NPs are interchangeable with normal noun phrases. This is not so. A minor point is that a bare role NP nearly always picks out a unique specific title or role. In this respect, bare role NPs are similar to Proper Names. Furthermore, the organisation or body that this role is in relation to must be obvious from the discourse. If there are several managers in a particular organisation, you cannot want to become Manager. The reason in this case is that it is not clear which unique managerial role you wish to inhabit. If there are several kings under discussion, we cannot modify a bare role NP to show which one we want to refer to. So the following is malformed:

• *No, he is king I told you about yesterday. (ungrammatical)

The word king must immediately pick out the specific role being discussed.

Perhaps more importantly than all of this is that a bare role NP cannot, in normal circumstances, occur as a subject or object of a clause. The grammatical function of bare role NPs is almost entirely restricted to that of Predicative Complement. We normally only see bare role NPs, therefore, as complements of verbs such as BE or BECOME. The following sentences are therefore ungrammatical:

• *They killed King. (ungrammatical - king as direct object)
• *King ordered the execution of the chancellor. (ungrammatical - king as subject)
• *I was afraid of King. (ungrammatical - king as object complement of preposition).

Notice however, that bare role NPs can function as the complements of prepositions, where the complement is predicative, i.e. it describes an attribute of another entity in the sentence. Bare role NPs often occur as a complement of the preposition as:

• She performed very well as Managing Director.

Conclusion

All three forms of noun phrase, "king", "a king" and the king" are fully grammatical (and indeed there are many other determiners such as this or some which we could use with this noun).

If this word is a predicative complement, is being used such that it specifically refers to a role, not so much to an entity, and if this role is unique and easily identifiable by the listener, then we could use a bare role NP:

• He wanted to become King.

If we are considering an individual more than a role; if the king is being considered as one of many; if the phrase is not being used with a predicative function but as a direct object, subject or so forth; then we will have to use the word king as part of a normal noun phrase, where - if it is singular - it will have to occur with a suitable determiner. The range of determiners will be the same as for any other singular countable noun, and like other noun phrases, the determiner that is used will depend on the context.

Solution 4:

The "a" implies multiple kings whereas "to be king" implies the ultimate king of all. So the latter packs more of a punch.

Solution 5:

Either one might be correct; it really depends on the context.

For example, in America people might say "I can't wait to be president" and we know we're talking about the American president, not any other president.