prototypical noun versus element noun

Question

Could anybody please help me read this part of an article correctly. The author, I think, says Santiago is a typical city and each of the typical cities has one hospital. I don't quite understand first why Santiago is called a typical city; Santiago is the capital of Chile and it's large. Second do typical cities only have one hospital? I presume my difficulty is rooted in my understanding of 'a typical city.' Does this mean a prototypical city; thus, a prototypical hospital (representing the more than just one hospital)? But if this reading were the case, the consistency would break in the next paragraph, which is quoted next. Certainly the author is considering an element noun here, not its prototypical noun.

(13) a. As soon as my cousin arrived in Santiago, she broke her foot
  and had to spend a week in the hospital.
  
  It has been suggested to us by Paul Kay, Tadashi Kumagai and others
  that use of definite NPs to denote non-unique locations such as those
  in (13) and (15) may be explained in terms of frames, in the sense of
  Fillmore (1977, 1987). For example, in (13a) the mention of
  Santiago may give rise to a frame for a typical city, which includes a hospital.

However, this does not seem to account for all cases:
  
  (16) a. The first thing we did upon arriving in Santiago was to go
  to the park and have a relaxing picnic lunch.
  
  In (16a), use of the park seems felicitous despite the fact that there
  is typically more than a single park within a given city.

KarlG · Answer

The article tests three common explanations for use of the definite article in (American) English — familiarity, uniqueness, relevance — and find them wanting, especially in expressions in “prototypical” contexts.

I say American English because one of the most salient differences to British English is that Britons go to hospital and are in hospital for treatment, while Americans do so with the definite article, even when the hospital is not necessarily uniquely identifiable. If Britons go to a hospital for any other reason, say, to visit a patient, then the article is used. This suggests the obvious: what’s topical is that the person is ill or injured enough to require inpatient care, not where they are being treated.

Having a picnic in the park is similar: the picnic is topical, not which park.  It's as generic as in the idiom “It’ [not] a walk in the park.”

The authors also mention means of transport — take the stairs, the bus, the train — all along fixed routes. I would argue that the most convenient route to a specific destination qualifies as unique.

I would also argue that if A asks B to open the window, rather than a window, A means the window closest to B, even when there are several windows, since how much air are you going to get from a window several feet away?

prototypical noun versus element noun

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