What part of speech is the word article

Lecture
#4.
The
Article

1.
General characteristics.

2.
The problem of the number.

3.
The problem of the meaning of the article.

I.
General
characteristics

Meaning:
The
article is a functional part of speech which expresses definiteness
and indefiniteness.

Form:
It
is unchangeable.

Function:
the
article is never a separate part of the sentence. In the sentence it
is combined with the noun and it may be called a noun determiner. Its
syntactical role consists in marking off a noun or a noun phrase as a
part of a sentence. The article is placed before the noun it refers
to and before all the words in a noun phrase.

E.g.
It’s a
book.
It is a
very interesting modern English book.

The
article signals the substantivisation of other parts of speech: e. g.
Her dress was a light brown. “A” refers to the word which is
substantivised. In the example “He’s such a
nothing” the article refers to the pronoun which is substantivised.

The
use of the article with the noun is determined by the syntactical
function of the given noun. As a rule the
noun in the function of a subject is used with a definite article.
A noun in the function of predicative is used with the indefinite
article. The use of the article is also determined by the syntactical
connection of the noun, namely by the type of attributes. There are
two types (1) limitive (ограничивающее)
and (2) descriptive (описательное).

The
limitive
attribute requires the definite article; the descriptive
requires the indefinite article or the zero article.

E.g.
This is not the book I asked you to bring. She is a person of a
strong will.

The
use of the article is also determined by the functional sentence,
perspective or by the actual division of the sentence.

II.
The problem of the number

Linguists
argue about the number of articles in Modern English. Some
linguists consider that there are three articles in Modern English:
the definite, the indefinite and the zero article.

The
definite article
is used with a noun to show that the speaker means
a definite object distinct from all other objects of the same class.
That’s
why the definite article is called the
limiting article.

The
definite article is a definite determiner and it may be substituted
by other definite determiners (e.g. by possessive pronouns): Give me
the (this, my, your) book.

The
indefinite article refers a thing to a certain class of similar
things. It is a
classifying article.
The indefinite article is an indefinite determiner of a noun and it
may be substituted by other indefinite determiners. E.g. Give me a
(any) book.

The
zero article is the absence of the article which has a grammatical
meaning. The zero article is used with material nouns, abstract nouns
and nouns in the plural number when they are taken in a general
sense.

This
classification of the article may be found in the book “Morphology
of English” by Prof. Smirnitsky and in many other books including
school textbooks.

Besides
in Modern English there are certain cases when the article is omitted
–

1. In
   newspaper headings: “Bodyshop in__ good shape”.

2. in
   writer’s remarks in plays to show the difference between the main
   text in the play and the remarks. e.g. Opens window. Comes up to
   table.

3.
(may be omitted) in explanations given in dictionaries. This is done
form the sake of economy of space.

4.
(usually omitted) in the text of a telegram e.g. “room reserved
for week-end”.

5.
In calendars and weather forecasts: E.g. Sun rises at six.

In
all the cases where we have the omission of the article this omission
does not influence the meaning expressed and can be easily restored.

Some
linguists express the opinion that there are two articles in Modern
English: the definite and the indefinite.
The cases which are called the zero article they call the absence of
the article or the meaningful (значимое)
absence of the article.

Besides
the two articles and the meaning of the article they also point out
certain cases when the article is omitted for stylistic purposes.
This point of view is stressed in the book of English grammar by
Kobrina and in the textbook by Bloch “A course in theoretical
grammar”.

The
linguists who consider that there is no zero article in English prove
their point of view in the following way: they say that the idea of
zero article takes its origin in the notion of zero-morphemes (a
book-books; a book is characterized by the zero morpheme). They say
that if the article can be understood as a grammatical morpheme then
it is possible to speak about the zero article, but the article is
not a grammatical morpheme, it is a word and the idea of a zero word
is doubtful.

The
article can be analyzed from
the point of view of the theory of binary privative opposition
(which was done by Prof. Bloch in the book “A course in theoretical
English grammar”).

He
says that in the article as a part of speech we first of all find the
opposition of the definite article on the one hand and two other
forms of the article that is the zero article and a meaningful
absence of it on the other hand. This is the
opposition of the first level.
In this opposition the definite article is the marked member of the
opposition. It has an identifying function. It is characterized by
identification. The indefinite article and the meaningful absence of
the article form the unmarked member of the opposition. They do not
denote the identification of the noun. They are characterized by
non-identification.

The
unmarked member of the opposition in its turn presents the opposition
of two forms. This opposition
of the second level
contrasts two types of generalization: (1) relative generalization
and (2) absolute generalization.

The
relative generalization is the strong member of the opposition – it
includes the
indefinite article and the absence if the article with nouns in the
plural.
Absolute generalization is the unmarked member of the opposition. It
is characterized by the meaning of abstraction and it includes the
meaningful absence of the article.

The
article

/

(unmarked
member)
(marked
member)

The
(+) (-) a, an, Ǿ

Identification:
Non-identification:

The
dog /

The
dogs a (an), Ǿ Ǿ (-)

The
milk relative absolute

The
information generalization generalization

(classification)
(abstraction)

A
dog milk

Dogs
information

Milk

Information

In
case of identification
the
definite article may be substituted by other different determiners
(our dog, their dog, this milk, that information). In case of
relative
generalization
the indefinite article or the meaningful absence of the article may
be substituted by an indefinite determiner.

e.g.
There is some dog in our garden. There are some dogs in our garden.
There is some milk in the glass. We received some new information on
the problem.

In
case of absolute
generalization
an abstract noun is taken into general meaning. E.g. Milk is useful
(in
general).Scientific
information is very important (in
general).

III.
The problem of the number of meanings of the article in English

Linguists
are at issue about the problem of the numbers of the meaning of the
article. Some linguists consider that each article has one meaning,
others say that the article has at least two meanings. Then, for
instance, the definite article may denote: 1) the object singled out
from other objects of the same class and 2)it may also denote the
whole class of objects as different from other classes

e.
g. The dog has returned home. The dog is a domestic animal.

Other
linguists say that the definite article always has only one and the
same meaning and the difference (in meaning) between the sentences
given above depends not on the article but on the other elements of
the sentence, usually on the type of the predicate.

e.
g The dog has come
home. (come- simple, expressed by a verb, denoting a concrete
physical action. The verb is used in the Present Perfect tense). The
dog is a domestic animal (is…animal –compound nominal, the link
verb is in the Present Indefinite tense and the predicative “an
animal” denotes a zoological /u/ idea).

The
same may be said about the indefinite article. E.g. There is a hill
behind our house. A hill is the opposite of a valley.

Some
linguists say that the indefinite article has two meanings: (1) it
serves to denote an object without reference of its individual
peculiarities; (2) the indefinite article denotes any object of a
given class.

The
second point of view is that the meanings of the article are the same
in both sentences, and the difference in meanings depends on the type
of the predicate and other words of the sentence.

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An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.

In English, both «the» and «a(n)» are articles, which combine with nouns to form noun phrases. Articles typically specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase, but in many languages, they carry additional grammatical information such as gender, number, and case. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners, and quantifiers. In linguistic interlinear glossing, articles are abbreviated as ART.

Types[edit]

Definite article[edit]

«Definite article» redirects here. For the Eddie Izzard comedy DVD, see Definite Article.

A definite article is an article that marks a definite noun phrase. Definite articles such as English the are used to refer to a particular member of a group. It may be something that the speaker has already mentioned or it may be otherwise something uniquely specified.

For example, Sentence 1 uses the definite article and thus expresses a request for a particular book. In contrast, Sentence 2 uses an indefinite article and thus conveys that the speaker would be satisfied with any book.

1. Give me the book.
2. Give me a book.

The definite article can also be used in English to indicate a specific class among other classes:

The cabbage white butterfly lays its eggs on members of the Brassica genus.

However, recent developments show that definite articles are morphological elements linked to certain noun types due to lexicalization. Under this point of view, definiteness does not play a role in the selection of a definite article more than the lexical entry attached to the article.^{[clarification needed][1][2]}

Indefinite article[edit]

An indefinite article is an article that marks an indefinite noun phrase. Indefinite articles are those such as English «some» or «a», which do not refer to a specific identifiable entity. Indefinites are commonly used to introduce a new discourse referent which can be referred back to in subsequent discussion:

1. A monster ate a cookie. His name is Cookie Monster.

Indefinites can also be used to generalize over entities who have some property in common:

1. A cookie is a wonderful thing to eat.

Indefinites can also be used to refer to specific entities whose precise identity is unknown or unimportant.

1. A monster must have broken into my house last night and eaten all my cookies.
2. A friend of mine told me that happens frequently to people who live on Sesame Street.

Indefinites also have predicative uses:

1. Leaving my door unlocked was a bad decision.

Indefinite noun phrases are widely studied within linguistics, in particular because of their ability to take exceptional scope.

Proper article[edit]

A proper article indicates that its noun is proper, and refers to a unique entity. It may be the name of a person, the name of a place, the name of a planet, etc. The Māori language has the proper article a, which is used for personal nouns; so, «a Pita» means «Peter». In Māori, when the personal nouns have the definite or indefinite article as an important part of it, both articles are present; for example, the phrase «a Te Rauparaha», which contains both the proper article a and the definite article Te refers to the person name Te Rauparaha.

The definite article is sometimes also used with proper names, which are already specified by definition (there is just one of them). For example: the Amazon, the Hebrides. In these cases, the definite article may be considered superfluous. Its presence can be accounted for by the assumption that they are shorthand for a longer phrase in which the name is a specifier, i.e. the Amazon River, the Hebridean Islands.^{[citation needed]} Where the nouns in such longer phrases cannot be omitted, the definite article is universally kept: the United States, the People’s Republic of China.

This distinction can sometimes become a political matter: the former usage the Ukraine stressed the word’s Russian meaning of «borderlands»; as Ukraine became a fully independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it requested that formal mentions of its name omit the article. Similar shifts in usage have occurred in the names of Sudan and both Congo (Brazzaville) and Congo (Kinshasa); a move in the other direction occurred with The Gambia. In certain languages, such as French and Italian, definite articles are used with all or most names of countries: la France/le Canada/l’Allemagne, l’Italia/la Spagna/il Brasile.

If a name [has] a definite article, e.g. the Kremlin, it cannot idiomatically be used without it: we cannot say Boris Yeltsin is in Kremlin.

Some languages use definite articles with personal names, as in Portuguese (a Maria, literally: «the Maria»), Greek (η Μαρία, ο Γιώργος, ο Δούναβης, η Παρασκευή), and Catalan (la Núria, el/en Oriol). Such usage also occurs colloquially or dialectally in Spanish, German, French, Italian and other languages. In Hungarian, the colloquial use of definite articles with personal names, though widespread, is considered to be a Germanism.

The definite article sometimes appears in American English nicknames such as «the Donald», referring to former president Donald Trump, and «the Gipper», referring to former president Ronald Reagan.^[4]

Partitive article[edit]

A partitive article is a type of article, sometimes viewed as a type of indefinite article, used with a mass noun such as water, to indicate a non-specific quantity of it. Partitive articles are a class of determiner; they are used in French and Italian in addition to definite and indefinite articles. (In Finnish and Estonian, the partitive is indicated by inflection.) The nearest equivalent in English is some, although it is classified as a determiner, and English uses it less than French uses de.

French: Veux-tu du café ?

Do you want (some) coffee?

For more information, see the article on the French partitive article.

Haida has a partitive article (suffixed -gyaa) referring to «part of something or… to one or more objects of a given group or category,» e.g., tluugyaa uu hal tlaahlaang «he is making a boat (a member of the category of boats).»^[5]

Negative article[edit]

A negative article specifies none of its noun, and can thus be regarded as neither definite nor indefinite. On the other hand, some consider such a word to be a simple determiner rather than an article. In English, this function is fulfilled by no, which can appear before a singular or plural noun:

No man has been on this island.

No dogs are allowed here.

No one is in the room.

In German, the negative article is, among other variations, kein, in opposition to the indefinite article ein.

Ein Hund – a dog

Kein Hund – no dog

The equivalent in Dutch is geen:

een hond – a dog

geen hond – no dog

Zero article[edit]

The zero article is the absence of an article. In languages having a definite article, the lack of an article specifically indicates that the noun is indefinite. Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner.^[6] In English, the zero article rather than the indefinite is used with plurals and mass nouns, although the word «some» can be used as an indefinite plural article.

Visitors end up walking in mud.

Crosslinguistic variation[edit]

Articles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world’s major languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many Turkic languages (including Tatar, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many Uralic languages (incl. Finnic^[a] and Saami languages), Indonesian, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, the Baltic languages, the majority of Slavic languages, the Bantu languages (incl. Swahili). In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.

Linguists believe the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, Proto-Indo-European, did not have articles. Most of the languages in this family do not have definite or indefinite articles: there is no article in Latin or Sanskrit, nor in some modern Indo-European languages, such as the families of Slavic languages (except for Bulgarian and Macedonian, which are rather distinctive among the Slavic languages in their grammar, and some Northern Russian dialects^[7]), Baltic languages and many Indo-Aryan languages. Although Classical Greek had a definite article (which has survived into Modern Greek and which bears strong functional resemblance to the German definite article, which it is related to), the earlier Homeric Greek used this article largely as a pronoun or demonstrative, whereas the earliest known form of Greek known as Mycenaean Greek did not have any articles. Articles developed independently in several language families.

Not all languages have both definite and indefinite articles, and some languages have different types of definite and indefinite articles to distinguish finer shades of meaning: for example, French and Italian have a partitive article used for indefinite mass nouns, whereas Colognian has two distinct sets of definite articles indicating focus and uniqueness, and Macedonian uses definite articles in a demonstrative sense, with a tripartite distinction (proximal, medial, distal) based on distance from the speaker or interlocutor. The words this and that (and their plurals, these and those) can be understood in English as, ultimately, forms of the definite article the (whose declension in Old English included thaes, an ancestral form of this/that and these/those).

In many languages, the form of the article may vary according to the gender, number, or case of its noun. In some languages the article may be the only indication of the case. Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old versus new information, such as topic–comment constructions.

Tables[edit]

Variations of articles in definiteness and inflection among major languages

	Definite	Indefinite	Gendered	Numbered	Case-inflected
Afrikaans	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Albanian	Yes, as suffixes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Arabic	Yes, as prefixes	Yes, as suffixes	No	No	No
Armenian	Yes, as suffixes	No	No	No	No
Basque	Yes, as suffixes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Belarusian	No	No	No	No	No
Bengali	Yes, as suffixes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Bulgarian	Yes, as suffixes	No	Yes	Yes	Only masculine singular
Catalan	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Chinese	No	No	No	No	No
Czech	No	No	No	No	No
	Definite	Indefinite	Gendered	Numbered	Case-inflected
Danish	Yes, before adjectives or as suffixes	Yes	Yes	Yes (if definite)	No
Dutch	Yes	Yes	Yes (if definite)	Yes (if definite)	No, except for the genitive case
English	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Esperanto	Yes	No	No	No	No
Estonian	No	No	No	No	No
Finnish[a]	No	No	No	No	No
French	Yes	Yes	Yes (if singular)	Yes	No
Georgian	No	No	No	No	No
German	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (if definite)	Yes
Greek	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (if definite)	Yes
Guarani	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
	Definite	Indefinite	Gendered	Numbered	Case-inflected
Hawaiian	Yes	Yes	No	Yes (if definite)	No
Hebrew	Yes, as prefixes	No	No	No	No
Hungarian	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Icelandic	Yes, as suffixes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Interlingua	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Irish	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Italian	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Japanese	No	No	No	No	No
Korean	No	No	No	No	No
Latvian	No	No	No	No	No
	Definite	Indefinite	Gendered	Numbered	Case-inflected
Lithuanian	No	No	No	No	No
Macedonian	Yes, as suffixes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Malay/Indonesian	Rarely necessary	No	No	No	No
Nepali	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Norwegian	Yes, before adjectives or as suffixes	Yes	Yes	Yes (if definite)	No
Pashto	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Persian	Might be used optionally	Yes	No	No	No
Polish	No	No	No	No	No
Portuguese	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Romanian	Yes, as suffixes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Russian	No	No	No	No	No
Sanskrit	No	No	No	No	No
Scottish Gaelic	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Definite	Indefinite	Gendered	Numbered	Case-inflected
Serbo-Croatian	No	No	No	No	No
Slovak	No	No	No	No	No
Slovene	No	No	No	No	No
Somali	Yes, as suffixes	No	Yes	No	Yes
Spanish	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Swahili	No	No	No	No	No
Swedish	Yes, before adjectives or as suffixes	Yes	Yes	Yes (if definite)	No
Tamil	No	No	No	No	No
Toki Pona	No	No	No	No	No
Turkish	No	Might be used optionally	No	No	No
Ukrainian	No	No	No	No	No
Welsh	Yes	No	Causes initial consonant mutation to singular feminine nouns	No	No
Yiddish	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (if definite)	Yes
	Definite	Indefinite	Gendered	Numbered	Case-inflected

The articles used in some languages

Language	definite article	partitive article	indefinite article
Abkhaz	a-		-k
Afrikaans	die		‘n
Albanian	-a, -ja, -i, -ri, -ni, -u, -t, -in, -un, -n, -rin, -nin, -në, -ën, -s, -së, -ës, -të, -it, -ët (all suffixes)	disa	një
Arabic	al- or el ال (prefix)		-n
Assamese	-tû, -ta, -ti, -khôn, -khini, -zôn, -zôni, -dal, -zûpa etc.		êta, êkhôn, êzôn, êzôni, êdal, êzûpa etc.
Bangla	-টা, -টি, -গুলো, -রা, -খানা		একটি, একটা, কোন
Breton	an, al, ar		un, ul, ur
Bulgarian	-та, -то, -ът, -ят, -те (all suffixes)		един/някакъв, една/някаква, едно/някакво, едни/някакви
Catalan	el, la, l’, els, les ses, lo, los, es, sa		un, una uns, unes
Cornish	an
Danish	Singular: -en, -n -et, -t (all suffixes) Plural: -ene, -ne (all suffixes)		en, et
Dutch	de, het (‘t); archaic since 1945/46 but still used in names and idioms: des, der, den		een (‘n)
English	the		a, an
Esperanto	la
Finnish (colloquial)[a]	se		yks(i)
French	le, la, l’, les	de, d’, du, de la, des, de l’	un, une, des
German	der, die, das des, dem, den		ein, eine, einer, eines einem, einen
Greek	ο, η, το οι, οι, τα		ένας, μια, ένα
Hawaiian	ka, ke nā		he
Hebrew	ha- ה‎ (prefix)
Hungarian	a, az		egy
Icelandic	-(i)nn, -(i)n, -(i)ð, -(i)na, -num, -(i)nni, -nu, -(i)ns, -(i)nnar, -nir, -nar, -(u)num, -nna (all suffixes)
Interlingua	le		un
Irish	an, na, a’ (used colloquially)
Italian	il, lo, la, l’ i, gli, le	del, dello, della, dell’ dei, degli, degl’, delle	un’, uno, una, un
Khasi	u, ka, i ki
Kurdish	-eke -ekan	hendê, birrê	-êk -anêk
Latin
Luxembourgish	den, déi (d’), dat (d’) dem, der	däers/es, däer/er	en, eng engem, enger
Macedonian	-от -ов -он -та -ва -на -то -во -но -те -ве -не -та -ва -на (all suffixes)	неколку	еден една едно едни
Manx	y, yn, ‘n, ny
Malay (Both Malaysia and Indonesian)	Si (usually informal), Sang (more formal)
Māori	te (singular), ngā (plural)		he (also for «some»)
Maltese	(i)l-, (i)ċ-, (i)d-, (i)n-, (i)r-, (i)s-, (i)t-, (i)x-, (i)z-, (i)ż- (all prefixes)
Nepali			euta, euti, ek, anek, kunai एउटा, एउटी, एक, अनेक, कुनै
Norwegian (Bokmål)	Singular: -en, -et, -a (all suffixes) Plural: -ene, -a (all suffixes)		en, et, ei
Norwegian (Nynorsk)	Singular: -en, -et, -a (all suffixes) Plural: -ane, -ene, -a (all suffixes)		ein, eit, ei
Papiamento	e		un
Pashto			yaow, yaowə, yaowa, yaowey يو, يوهٔ, يوه, يوې
Persian	in, ān		yek, ye
Portuguese	o, a os, as		um, uma uns, umas
Quenya	i, in, ‘n
Romanian	-(u)l, -le, -(u)a -(u)lui, -i, -lor (all suffixes)		un, o unui, unei niște, unor
Scots	the		a
Scottish Gaelic	an, am, a’, na, nam, nan
Sindarin	i, in, -in, -n, en
Spanish	el, la, lo, los, las		un, una unos, unas
Swedish	Singular: -en, -n, -et, -t (all suffixes) Plural: -na, -a, -en (all suffixes)		en, ett
Welsh	y, yr, -‘r
Yiddish	דער (der), די (di), דאָס (dos), דעם (dem)		אַ (a), אַן (an)

The following examples show articles which are always suffixed to the noun:

• Albanian: zog, a bird; zogu, the bird
• Aramaic: שלם (shalam), peace; שלמא (shalma), the peace
  • Note: Aramaic is written from right to left, so an Aleph is added to the end of the word. ם becomes מ when it is not the final letter.
• Assamese: «কিতাপ (kitap)», book; «কিতাপখন (kitapkhôn)» : «The book»
• Bengali: «Bôi», book; «Bôiti/Bôita/Bôikhana» : «The Book»
• Bulgarian: стол stol, chair; столът stolǎt, the chair (subject); стола stola, the chair (object)
• Danish: hus, house; huset, the house; if there is an adjective: det gamle hus, the old house
• Icelandic: hestur, horse; hesturinn, the horse
• Macedonian: стол stol, chair; столот stolot, the chair; столов stolov, this chair; столон stolon, that chair
• Persian: sib, apple. (The Persian language does not have definite articles. It has one indefinite article ‘yek’ that means one. In Persian if a noun is not indefinite, it is a definite noun. «Sib e’ man، means my apple. Here ‘e’ is like ‘of’ in English; an so literally «Sib e man» means the apple of mine.)
• Romanian: drum, road; drumul, the road (the article is just «l», «u» is a «connection vowel» Romanian: vocală de legătură)
• Swedish and Norwegian: hus, house; huset, the house; if there is an adjective: det gamle (N)/gamla (S) huset, the old house

Examples of prefixed definite articles:

• Hebrew: ילד, transcribed as yeled, a boy; הילד, transcribed as hayeled, the boy
• Maltese: ktieb, a book; il-ktieb, the book; Maltese: għotja, a donation; l-għotja, the donation; Maltese: ċavetta, a key; iċ-ċavetta, the key; Maltese: dar, a house; id-dar, the house; Maltese: nemla, an ant; in-nemla, the ant; Maltese: ras, a head; ir-ras, the head; Maltese: sodda, a bed; is-sodda, the bed; Maltese: tuffieħa, an apple; it-tuffieħa, the apple; Maltese: xahar, a month; ix-xahar, the month; Maltese: zunnarija, a carrot; iz-zunnarija, the carrot; Maltese: żmien, a time; iż-żmien, the time

A different way, limited to the definite article, is used by Latvian and Lithuanian.
The noun does not change but the adjective can be defined or undefined. In Latvian: galds, a table / the table; balts galds, a white table; baltais galds, the white table. In Lithuanian: stalas, a table / the table; baltas stalas, a white table; baltasis stalas, the white table.

Languages in the above table written in italics are constructed languages and are not natural, that is to say that they have been purposefully invented by an individual (or group of individuals) with some purpose in mind. They do, however, all belong to language families themselves. Esperanto is derived from European languages and therefore all of its roots are found in Proto-Indo-European and cognates can be found in real-world languages like French, German, Italian and English. Interlingua is also based on European languages but with its main source being that of Italic descendant languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, with German and Russian being secondary sources, with words from further afield (but internationally known and often borrowed) contributing to the language’s vocabulary (such as words taken from Japanese, Arabic and Finnish). The result is a supposedly easy-to-learn language for the world. As well as these «auxiliary» languages the list contains two more: Quenya and Sindarin; these two languages were created by Professor Tolkien and used in his fictional works. They are not based on any real-world language family (as are Esperanto and Interlingua), but do share a common history with roots in Common Eldarin.

Tokelauan[edit]

When using a definite article in Tokelauan language, unlike in some languages like English, if the speaker is speaking of an item, they need not have referred to it previously as long as the item is specific.^[8] This is also true when it comes to the reference of a specific person.^[8] So, although the definite article used to describe a noun in the Tokelauan language is te, it can also translate to the indefinite article in languages that requires the item being spoken of to have been referenced prior.^[8] When translating to English, te could translate to the English definite article the, or it could also translate to the English indefinite article a.^[8] An example of how the definite article te can be used as an interchangeable definite or indefinite article in the Tokelauan language would be the sentence “Kua hau te tino”.^[8] In the English language, this could be translated as “A man has arrived” or “The man has arrived” where using te as the article in this sentence can represent any man or a particular man.^[8] The word he, which is the indefinite article in Tokelauan, is used to describe ‘any such item’, and is encountered most often with negatives and interrogatives.^[8] An example of the use of he as an indefinite article is “Vili ake oi k’aumai he toki ”, where ‘he toki ’ mean ‘an axe’.^[8] The use of he and te in Tokelauan are reserved for when describing a singular noun. However, when describing a plural noun, different articles are used. For plural definite nouns, rather than te, the article nā is used.^[8] ‘Vili ake oi k’aumai nā nofoa’ in Tokelauan would translate to “Do run and bring me the chairs” in English.^[8] There are some special cases in which instead of using nā, plural definite nouns have no article before them. The absence of an article is represented by 0.^[8] One way that it is usually used is if a large amount or a specific class of things are being described.^[8] Occasionally, such as if one was describing an entire class of things in a nonspecific fashion, the singular definite noun te would is used.^[8] In English, ‘Ko te povi e kai mutia’ means “Cows eat grass”.^[8] Because this is a general statement about cows, te is used instead of nā. The ko serves as a preposition to the “te” The article ni is used for describing a plural indefinite noun. ‘E i ei ni tuhi?’ translates to “Are there any books?”^[8]

Historical development[edit]

Articles often develop by specialization of adjectives or determiners. Their development is often a sign of languages becoming more analytic instead of synthetic, perhaps combined with the loss of inflection as in English, Romance languages, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Torlakian.

Joseph Greenberg in Universals of Human Language describes «the cycle of the definite article»: Definite articles (Stage I) evolve from demonstratives, and in turn can become generic articles (Stage II) that may be used in both definite and indefinite contexts, and later merely noun markers (Stage III) that are part of nouns other than proper names and more recent borrowings. Eventually articles may evolve anew from demonstratives.^[9]

Definite articles[edit]

Definite articles typically arise from demonstratives meaning that. For example, the definite articles in most Romance languages—e.g., el, il, le, la, lo, a, o — derive from the Latin demonstratives ille (masculine), illa (feminine) and illud (neuter).

The English definite article the, written þe in Middle English, derives from an Old English demonstrative, which, according to gender, was written se (masculine), seo (feminine) (þe and þeo in the Northumbrian dialect), or þæt (neuter). The neuter form þæt also gave rise to the modern demonstrative that. The ye occasionally seen in pseudo-archaic usage such as «Ye Olde Englishe Tea Shoppe» is actually a form of þe, where the letter thorn (þ) came to be written as a y.

Multiple demonstratives can give rise to multiple definite articles. Macedonian, for example, in which the articles are suffixed, has столот (stolot), the chair; столов (stolov), this chair; and столон (stolon), that chair. These derive from the Proto-Slavic demonstratives *tъ «this, that», *ovъ «this here» and *onъ «that over there, yonder» respectively. Colognian prepositions articles such as in dat Auto, or et Auto, the car; the first being specifically selected, focused, newly introduced, while the latter is not selected, unfocused, already known, general, or generic.

Standard Basque distinguishes between proximal and distal definite articles in the plural (dialectally, a proximal singular and an additional medial grade may also be present). The Basque distal form (with infix -a-, etymologically a suffixed and phonetically reduced form of the distal demonstrative har-/hai-) functions as the default definite article, whereas the proximal form (with infix -o-, derived from the proximal demonstrative hau-/hon-) is marked and indicates some kind of (spatial or otherwise) close relationship between the speaker and the referent (e.g., it may imply that the speaker is included in the referent): etxeak («the houses») vs. etxeok («these houses [of ours]»), euskaldunak («the Basque speakers») vs. euskaldunok («we, the Basque speakers»).

Speakers of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, a modern Aramaic language that lacks a definite article, may at times use demonstratives aha and aya (feminine) or awa (masculine) – which translate to «this» and «that», respectively – to give the sense of «the».^[10]

Indefinite articles[edit]

Indefinite articles typically arise from adjectives meaning one. For example, the indefinite articles in the Romance languages—e.g., un, una, une—derive from the Latin adjective unus. Partitive articles, however, derive from Vulgar Latin de illo, meaning (some) of the.

The English indefinite article an is derived from the same root as one. The -n came to be dropped before consonants, giving rise to the shortened form a. The existence of both forms has led to many cases of juncture loss, for example transforming the original a napron into the modern an apron.

The Persian indefinite article is yek, meaning one.

See also[edit]

• English articles
• Al- (definite article in Arabic)
• Definiteness
• Definite description
• False title

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• «The Definite Article, ‘The’: The Most Frequently Used Word in World’s Englishes»
• Ing, John (September 17, 2019). «How to Use Articles Correctly in English (A, An & The)». Retrieved May 3, 2020.

Article as a part of speech. Theoretical and practical aspects

1.1 Definition

The issues relevant to the nature of the English article have been the focus of attention of early descriptive English Grammar books since the 16th century and it is intensively studied nowadays.

In the 16th -18th centuries the article was considered as a noun determiner. There was, however, a different point of view when the article was included into the adjective. Besides, there existed different approaches to English articles. According to G. Mironets, the article was considered as part of the Noun, as a separate part of speech and as a particle. The terms ”definite” and ”indefinite” were first used by J.Howell in 1662 [45, c.56].

Being aware of numerous points of view regarding the status of the article in the English language we share the view presented by B. Khaimovich and B. Rogovskaya who considered the article a separate part of speech. They consider that the two words a(an), the form a separate group or class characterized by:

a) the lexico-grammatical meaning of ”(in)definiteness”,

b) the right-hand combinability with nouns,

c) the function of noun specifiers [52, c.214]

The lexical meaning of a(n) in Modern English is a very weak reminder of its original meaning (OE. an=one). In spite of the long process of weakening there remains enough of the original meaning in a(n) to exclude the possibility of its being attached to a ”plural” noun.

The lexical meaning of the in Modern English is a pale shadow of its original demonstrative meaning.

The general lexico-grammatical meaning of these words, as usual, is not identical with their individual lexical meanings. It abstracts itself from the meaning of ”oneness” in a(n) and the ”demonstrative” meaning in the. Perhaps, the names of the articles (”definite”, ”indefinite”) denote the nearest approach to this lexico-grammatical meaning, which, for lack of a better term, might be defined as that of ”definiteness-indefiniteness” [52, c.215].

The article is a form word that serves as a noun determiner. It is one of the main means of conveying the idea of definiteness and indefiniteness.

Definiteness suggests that the object presented by the following noun is individualized and singled out from all the other objects of the same kind, whereas indefiniteness means a more general reference to an object [20, c.75].

The lexical meaning of the English articles is determined by its historical development. That is why after considering the historical development of the English articles their rendering into Ukrainian and Russian becomes obvious. Under the influence of the historical processes that took place both in phonetical and grammatical structure of the English language the article as a part of speech has undergone major changes. Its origin goes deep into the history of the English language both definite and indefinite articles. This explains the fact that when translating articles we get equivalents (in other languages) of various types. That is why we consider it necessary to present all stages of the historical formation of the English article.

An article (from Latin articulus ‘joint’ ), in traditional grammar also gender word or companion , is a word that is regularly used in connection with a noun (including nouns ) and that characterizes it primarily with regard to its definition . In German there is congruence , i.e. matching of features, between article and noun in gender , number and case . However , it is not essential to the concept of an article that such features be expressed; therefore the German term “gender word” is not used generally in grammar. It is possible for a language to differentiate gender in nouns, but at the same time not in articles, as in Welsh .

An article has no meaning of its own in terms of content, but rather sets the content description given by the accompanying noun in relation to concrete individuals, for example in the following way:

• Using the description given, he introduces a new individual: a baby is sitting in this car . (a)
• He takes up an already mentioned individual who can be clearly identified from the description: Give me the baby! (b)
• An individual who has not yet been mentioned is identified, but whose existence can be clearly deduced from both the sender and the recipient: She has to go to the hospital, the baby comes. (c)
• A general statement is made about something known by its nature: an infant has not yet mastered spelling. (d)

Such features of meaning are called indefinite (a), definite (b), specific (c) and generic (d) in grammar ; they are summarized in the grammatical category determination .

These meanings do not necessarily have to be expressed by independent words, but can also be indicated by affixes that have no status as independent words (for example in the Scandinavian or Balkan languages). Articles as independent words are prominent insofar as they occur in the major languages ​​of Western Europe, which are spread across the globe: in English, in French, in Spanish, in Portuguese and also in German.

Linguistic assignment

Due to their function as a companion to nouns , articles are counted among the determinatives (also determinants, determiners, article words; DET) in recent linguistics . Under the extended definition of part of speech , the adjectival pronouns are also included as article words . It should be noted that article words are only rated as such if they accompany a noun. Without this feature, they are common pronouns.

In addition to the article in the narrower sense, such determinatives include forms derived from pronouns that can replace the article, for example no / this / that / some / every computer program instead of the / a computer program .

Languages ​​that have neither an article in the strict sense nor an article word are articleless, even if the article word is included in the further definition of the part of speech “article” (ART). But can an i. e. S. article-free language type (such as Slavic languages) definitely have article words, for example: Latin iste homo or Russian этот мужчина for German  ‘this man’ .

Syntactic status

The addition of an article creates a self-contained syntactic phrase . However, opinions differ as to whether the article represents the syntactic head or the noun in this connection ; accordingly, either a determin phrase or a noun phrase is used.

Manifestations

There are two semantically differentiated articles, namely the definite (definite) and the indefinite (indefinite) article . For their function see the keyword definiteness . German has both ( the vs. one ). Other languages ​​such as ancient Greek only have a definite article, while others such as Turkish only have an indefinite article, while most languages ​​have no article at all, including Latin .

The languages ​​with articles differ in the extent to which their use in nominal expressions is possible or mandatory. In German z. B. indefinite plural nouns (like in there were students ) and indefinite mass nouns (like in can you lend me money? ) Have a so-called null article . Since this article- less form has a paradigmatic relationship to the indefinite article, one also speaks of the so-called indefinite null article . For the indefinite plural form ( students ) one assumes a plural zero article , to distinguish it from the zero article for uncountable nouns, such as money or thirst .

The German articles are congruent with the noun to which they belong in the grammatical categories gender , number and case . In many cases, these categories are more recognizable by the article than by the ending of the noun, such as the woman in the nominative and accusative vs. of women in the genitive and dative . Hence the methodological importance of the article leads to the analysis of these categories. In the German spelling dictionary, the gender is given via the form of the definitive article der, die, das .

Historical development of the article

As far as we know today, the Indo-European original language , from which most of the languages ​​of Europe developed over the past 5000 years, had no article. The articles were first created in the various subsidiary languages.

The indefinite article

The indefinite article developed in many languages ​​from the numerals (number word) for 1 and is therefore often identical to this in form.

Latin ūnus / ūna / ūnum (m./f./n.)

→ Italian uno / una

→ French un / une

→ catalan un / una

→ Spanish un / una

→ Portuguese um / uma

However, in contrast to the numerical word, it is usually not emphasized or only weakly emphasized and has therefore changed so much in its form in some languages ​​and dialects that it can be clearly distinguished from the numerical word:

Latin ūnus / ūna / ūnum (m./f./n.)

→ Romanian unu / una (numerical word)

→ Romanian un / o (indefinite article)

Old English ān

→ new English one (numeric word)

→ new English a, an (indefinite article)

Old High German eine / einiu / einaz (m./f./n.)

→ Middle High German ein / ein / ein (m./f./n.)

→ Bavarian oa (numeral, standard form for all genera)

→ Bavarian a (indefinite article, standard form for all genera)

For the different functions of numerals and indefinite articles, compare the following German sentences, where the sentence accent is marked in bold:

I want a pencil. (Sentence accent on the numerical word: exactly one, not two or more )

I want a pencil . (Sentence accent on the object: and not something else, e.g. a ballpoint pen )

I want a pencil. (Sentence accent on the subject: and not someone else, e.g. my colleague )

I want a pencil. (Sentence accent on the predicate: and don’t already have it )

Only in the first movement is a form of the word for number one, and it is as such also always stressed. In the remaining clauses there is an indefinite article and means any; as such, it does not carry the sentence accent, but rather leans its emphasis on the corresponding noun (in this case: pencil ).

The difference is also recognizable by the fact that the indefinite article — in contrast to the number word for 1 — can be reduced to the clitic in everyday German and thus completely loses its status as an independent word with emphasis:

I should like ‘nen pencil.

I should like ‘n pencil.

In more recent forms of colloquial language, however, the indefinite article is newly formed by enriching it with the particles that have been deprived of their deictic function as follows :

I want a pencil like that .

The definite article

The oldest language for which the use of a particular article can be proven is Greek . The corresponding morpheme goes back to a primitive Indo-European demonstrative , which in the course of the development of the Greek language has lost its demonstrative function to such an extent that it can be converted into a specific article:

urindogermanisch * só deh₂mos (pointedly: «these people»)

→ ancient Greek ὁ δῆμος ( ho dēmos, definitely: «the people»; also «the entire population of an area»)

Articles can also be found in Wulfila’s Gothic translation of the Bible, the use of which Ingerid Dal traces back to the influence of the Greek source text in which the article was used. In Old High German (which is not a continuation of Gothic) the use of the article is also documented, although not yet fully consistent: The definite article developed from the demonstrative pronouns dër, diu, daz and has also been used as a relative pronoun. As a result, the so-called compound demonstrative pronouns emerged from the simple demonstrative pronoun and the inflectable demonstrative particle se . Therefore, at first only the first part is inflected; the end flexion only becomes the rule here later.

In Middle High German, the occurrence of nouns without articles is very limited; the use of the definite as well as the indefinite article becomes the rule in Middle High German. In this language period there is also the form of article placement before possessive pronouns and nouns, which is impossible in New High German: die iuweren schoenen tohter. Another construction that is not in use today is the simultaneous use of definite and indefinite articles, which can be demonstrated above all in front of a relative clause or in the superlative : one of the most beautiful grass. Only gradually did the development reach the point that the alternative use of definite or indefinite articles or lack of articles corresponded to specific differences in meaning.

This trend can be observed today in some of the Baltic and Slavic languages . In Czech contextual nouns are often preceded by a demonstrative pronoun, as is the case in Lithuanian . In Polish , demonstrative pronouns appear after them occasionally , which emphasize the aforementioned expressions.

The increasing penetration of article usage can be traced back to a constant tendency in the development of the ancillary syllables, which continues into the present day language. For linguistic reasons, there is a weakening of the adjacent syllables and also the expulsion of the adjacent syllable vowels ( apocope and syncope ). This primarily phonetic constant has consequences for the system of forms, as it has a significant effect on the flexion morphemes. Due to the weakening of the full-tone final syllable vowels to the Schwa ([ə], mostly written e ), different cases formally coincide; the article is used to indicate the case. As a result of the weakening of the adjacent syllables, the tendency from the synthetic to the analytical language structure is increased. However, it is also debated whether the weakening of the neighboring syllables might not be a consequence of the appearance of the particular article.

The article in different languages

The various daughter languages ​​of Indo-European have developed articles only gradually. This happened in the Germanic languages such as German and English , in the Romance languages , the Celtic languages , Bulgarian , Albanian and Armenian . In Albanian , Bulgarian , Romanian and in the North Germanic languages , the indefinite article is prefixed as in German, but the definite article is implemented as a suffix — this, however, falls within the scope of determinative inflection .

The article in the West Germanic languages

All modern West Germanic languages have developed both a definite (def) and an indefinite (indef) article (ART) as independent words; both precede the noun (NOM) that they determine. Their usage is broadly similar in all of these languages; For comparison, consider the following sentence in the various West Germanic standard languages :

language	ART.def	NOM	copula	ART.indef	NOM
English :	The	sun	is	a	star.
West Frisian :	De	senses	is	in	stjer.
Dutch :	De	zon	is	een	ster.
Flemish :	De	at first	is	e	sterre.
Afrikaans :	The	son	is	‘n	ster.
Luxembourgish :	D ‘	Sunday	ass	en	Strength.
German :	The	Sun	is	a	Star.

In this example sentence the definite article marks the noun sun as a (contextual) unique, i.e. that is, there is only one possible reference object outside of language (regardless of the fact that there are of course many stars, which by definition can also be suns for any other planets). In contrast, the noun asterisk is applicable to a whole class of reference objects outside of language. The indefinite article fulfills the generic function of assigning the generic name star as a predicate to the unique sun and thus the extra-linguistic reference object «sun» to the linguistic concept class of «stars».

The article in the North Germanic languages

Compare the following sentence in the different North Germanic written languages , where the indefinite article is an independent word (ART.indef) and precedes the noun to be determined (NOM), but definiteness is often expressed by a suffix (= def) on the noun. This suffix (developed from the Old Norse demonstrative pronoun hinn, hin, hit ) combines with the noun to be determined to form a word and is not graphically separated from the noun in these written languages, but is segmented by the noun in the following overview for the purpose of visualization using =:

language	NOM = def	copula	ART.indef	NOM
Icelandic :	sól = in	he	O	stjarna.
Faroese :	sól = in	he	a	stjørna.
Norwegian ( Nynorsk ):	sol = a	he	egg	stars.
Norwegian ( Bokmål ):	sol = a or sol = en	he	en	stars.
Swedish :	sol = en	ar	en	stjärna.
Danish :	sol = en	he	en	stars.
West and South Jutish, however:	æ sol	he	en	stjar.

However, as far as nouns are connected with preceding adjectives, the article is prefixed as an independent word in these languages ​​as well, in Danish Sol en er rød «the sun is red», but den røde sol «the red sun».

In Swedish and Norwegian the article ending is also retained, the «double determinateness», ie (Swedish) den röda sol en or (Norwegian) den røde sol a . This «double determination» also applies in the East Danish dialect Bornholmisch . In Swedish, the preceding article is omitted in fixed phrases, e.g. B. Svarta Havet «Black Sea», Högra handen «the right hand», svenska folket «the Swedish people» as a fixed phrase, for example «the Swedes».

As the only sub-part of the North Germanic language area, the West and South Jut dialects use the preceding definite article æ . It is not inflected according to gender or number.

The article in the Romance languages

The Romance languages also have a definite and an indefinite article, although Latin , from which all these languages ​​are derived, did not yet have articles. In Vulgar Latin , however, the use of the demonstrative pronoun illegally has gradually established itself as a definite article and has been expanded further in the Romance languages ​​(except in Sardinian , where the pronoun ipse becomes the definitive article su / sa instead of illegally ). The usage is very similar to that of the West Germanic languages ​​(compare above). In the Western Romance languages, the specific article has the status of a syntactically independent word, while in the Balkan Romance languages ​​it is suffixed (see the following chapter).

Period	language	ART.def	NOM	copula	ART.indef	NOM
to 2nd century AD	Classical Latin	O	Sol	est	O	sidus.
2nd-8th Century AD	Vulgar Latin	(Ille)	Sol	est	(una)	stella.
Modern times (16th — 21st centuries)	Sardinian	Su	Brine	est	U.N’	isteddu.
Italian	Il	Brine	è	una	stella.
Portuguese	O	Sol	é	uma	estrela.
Spanish	El	Sol	it	una	estrella.
Catalan	El	Sol	it	U.N	estel.
French	Le	Soleil	est	une	étoile.
Graubünden Romance	Il	Sulegl	è	ina	staila.
Friulian	Il	Soreli	al è	une	stele.

The article in the Balkan languages

The languages ​​of the Balkansprachbund , although most of them are only largely related to one another, have undergone parallel developments (or influenced one another) in terms of article formation: While the indefinite article, as in all European languages, was derived from the numeral for 1 and the status of a syntactically independent article Word, the definite article was clitized and now functions as a suffix (= def) that merges with the noun (NOM):

language	NOM = def	copula	ART.indef	NOM
Albanian	Diell = i	ёshtё	njё	yll.
Bulgarian	Slănce = to	e	O	zvezda.
Macedonian	Sonce = to	e	O	dzvezda.
Romanian	Soare = le	este	O	stea.

The Armenian behaves similarly to the Iranian languages, although it is not one of these:

font	NOM = def	ART.indef	NOM	copula
Armenian	արեւ = ը	մի	աստղ	է.
Latin transcription	Arev = ё	mi	astgh	e .

The Greek has a Western European languages like structure, although it is counted many other criteria due to the Balkan languages:

font	ART.def	NOM	copula	ART.indef	NOM
Modern Greek	Ο	Ήλιος	είναι	ένας	αστέρας.
Latin transcription	O	Ilios	ine	enas	asteras.

Articleless languages

Many languages ​​do not have an article. But even they usually have linguistic means to express or emphasize the certainty or indeterminacy of a noun.

Slavic and Baltic languages

Most of the modern Baltic and all Slavic languages (apart from Bulgarian and Macedonian , which belong to the Balkans language union ) know neither definite nor indefinite articles; an overview of the most important Baltic and Slavic standard languages (excluding the Balkan Slavs):

Language branch	language	NOM (subject)	copula	NOM (Rhema)
Baltic	Latvian	Pillar	ir	zvaigzne.
Lithuanian	Pillar	(yra)	žvaigždė.
Slavic	West Slavic	Polish	Słońce	jest	gwiazdą.
Slovak	Slnko	ever	hviezda.
Czech	Slunce	ever	hvězda.
South Slavic	Croatian	Sunce	ever	zvijezda.
Serbian	Sunce	ever	zvezda.
Slovenian	Sonce	ever	zvezda.
East Slavic	Russian	Solnce	—	zvezda.
Ukrainian	Sonce	—	zorja.
Belarusian	Sonca	—	zorka.

In the example sentence, these languages ​​regulate the semantic functions specificity ( the sun ) and genericity ( a star ) by means of the word order (see topic-rhema structure ), which is fixed in this example sentence and cannot be reversed, such as in German ( Ein Stern ist the sun. ).

In sentences with verbs (except the copula be , which is hardly used in many Slavic languages in the present tense) have the Slavic languages also means the verbal category aspect about expression, the effects of which may overlap with the meaning of articles.

Furthermore, demonstrative pronouns, which in all Indo-European languages underlie the definitive articles historically, can take over the marking of definiteness , for example in colloquial Czech:

ten měsíc (m.) «this moon»

ta hvězda (f.) «this star»

ti lidé (m./pl.) «these people»

ty hvězdy (f./Pl.) «these stars»

However, this is not an article in the grammatical sense, as it cannot be used in the example sentence above because of its demonstrative meaning:

* To slunce je hvězda. (cf. German «* This sun is a star.»)

Slovene also has an indefinite article in colloquial language (formed from the numerical word en, ena, eno (‘one, one, one’)) and a particle ta (‘this’), which expresses definiteness and functions similarly to an article:

En nov kolega je prišel. («A new colleague has come.»)

Ta nova kolegica je simpatična. («This new colleague is personable.»)

However, these only occur in connection with the indefinite form of the adjective. In the written language, en and ta must be omitted in both examples.

Semitic languages

Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew each know a specific, but not an indefinite article (see also under “Weblinks”). However, standard Arabic indicates the status of a noun in a Portmanteau morpheme , which simultaneously indicates the case and indefiniteness / definiteness of the noun (in this example = do for feminine indefinite nominative). The definite article (def =) is graphically and aurally fused with the noun it accompanies to form a word:

language	def = NOM	copula	NOM (= indef)
New Hebrew	ha-šémeš	O	koḫáv.
High Arabic	aš-šámsu	O	náǧma (to do). *

* The ending «-tun» is not spoken at the end of the sentence

The amalgamation of the Arabic article al- before the so-called sun letters is particularly strong .

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages ​​do not know the category of the article. The noun is fundamentally indifferent to determinateness or indeterminacy, also to singular or plural. Other linguistic means are used to express certainty or indefiniteness, unless this is clear from the speaking situation. So in Turkish the possessive suffix, often the 3rd person — (s) i / ı / ü / u , can express certainty:

en büyük «very big, the biggest»

en büyüğü «the / the / the greatest (of them)»

iyi «good»

iyisi «the / the / the good (of it, of both)»

A case ending in the accusative can also express certainty:

Bir elma aldım. «I took an apple.»

but: Elmayı aldım. «I took the apple.»

Often the numeral bir «one» is used similarly to the indefinite article in German. Textbooks often refer to the word as an indefinite article for the sake of clarity. The parallelism is only an apparent one, because in Turkish the meaning as a numerical word is in the foreground. It marks the reference word as an individualized but not further defined singular. Compare (the word almak also means «buy»):

Bir elma aldım. «I bought an apple.» (Only an apple)

İki elma aldım. «I bought two apples.»

but: Elma aldım. «I bought apples.» (Or an apple, the number remains indefinite, it just depends on the type.)

When using the plural, the apples in this speech situation must be individualized and thus determined and adopt the accusative ending:

Elmaları aldım. «I bought the apples.»

There is no specific article in the other Turkic languages ​​either; Like an indefinite article, the numeral for 1 can be used optionally in all:

language	NOM	ART.indef	NOM	copula
Azerbaijani	Günəş	( bir )	ulduz.
Tatar	Kojaş	( over )	juldyz.
Chuvash	Xəvel	( pĕr )	śăltăr.
Turkish	Güneş	( bir )	yıldız	to you.
Uzbek	Quyosh	( bir )	yulduz.

The use of the numeral is not arbitrary, but leads to a nuanced shift in meaning. Güneş bir yıldız means: The sun is a star (= one example of the set of “star”). Güneş yıldız (dır) , on the other hand, would rather mean: The sun has the property of being a star / is «starry» .

Finno-Ugric languages

In the Baltic Finnish languages there are neither definite nor indefinite articles; in the Hungarian language, however:

language	ART.def	NOM	copula	ART.indef	NOM
Estonian	O	Päike	on	O	does.
Finnish	O	Aurinko	on	O	tahti.
Hungarian	A.	nap	—	egy	csillag.

Basque

In Basque there is both a specific as well as an indefinite article. Both are placed after the respective noun that accompanies them:

language	NOM (= def)	NOM	ART.indef	copula
Basque	Eguzki = a	izar	asked	there.
German (literally)	Sun = the	star	a	is.

The indefinite article is identical to the numeral for 1.

Division article

In some languages ​​there is the so-called division article , for example in French (de) and in Italian (di) in connection with the definite article. It is used when the noun indicates an uncountable amount and is mandatory in French and optional in Italian — for example:

French. Je mange you pain. (literally: «I eat from the bread.»)

it. Mangio (del) pane. (literally: «I eat (of) bread.»)

Historically, the partition article existed in almost all Romance languages; it stays longest in the central Romanesque area (Italo, Rhaeto and Galloromania).

Proprial article

In some European languages ​​there is a tendency to use proper names (so-called nouns propria ) as parts of a sentence with the definitive article, although proper names within a sentence usually already clearly refer to an extra-linguistic individual. This is common in southern German colloquial language :

Monika helped Peter.

Such an article is semantically expletive ; that is, it does not in any way alter the meaning of the proprium or the noun phrase it accompanies. It is therefore called a proprietary article .

Proprial use of the definite article is found

• in the Upper and Central German dialects as well as in Luxembourgish
• in Portuguese , Galician and the Occitan , Northern Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic dialects
• in Greek ,
• in the Hungarian colloquial language,
• in Arabic .
• In Norwegian dialects , the (preceding) demonstrative pronoun takes the place of the (suppletive) article in personal names.

What is striking is its continuous distribution area across the main Alpine ridge and various language families .

Standard German also knows the proprial article if the name is provided with an adjectival (left) attribute or a substantive left attribute :

The beautiful Monika

The girl Rosemarie

Catalan

Particular attention should be paid to the proprial article in the Catalan language ; there it is also distinguished morphologically (i.e. in sound and writing) from the definitive article for appellatives . Compare:

En Joan va portar el llibre.

Joan brought the book.

BUT:

L ‘ home va portar el llibre.

The man brought the book.

Malagasy

In the Malagasy language, not only is the proprial article formally different from the definite article ny for communia, but there are even different forms of the proprial article, depending on whether it is used for person or place names:

• For place names, the article takes the form of Toggle , such as in the capital of Madagascar , Antananarivo .
• For persons there are again different forms depending on gender and the intention and relationship of the speaker to the person being discussed (speaker):

		male speaker	female speaker
relationship	family	i	i
distant	ra	(ikala)
intention	respectful	ilai	ra
honorific	andria
pejorative	—	ikala

• For the plural, the proprial article has the form ry in front of groups of people who z. B. form a family.
• The forms ilai and ikala are also used in front of male and female animal names.

Forms of German Articles

Both the definite and the indefinite article of German are after

• Gender : masculine, feminine, neutral,
• Number : singular, plural,
• Case : nominative, genitive, dative, accusative

inflected.

In purely mathematical terms, 24 different inflections would be possible per article. In fact, there are only six forms of the definite article and seven forms of the indefinite article, most of which assume several grammatical functions in the respective paradigm .

It is particularly important to note that the indefinite article in the plural always shows the zero form ∅:

Someone bought a book yesterday . (Singular)

Someone bought ∅ books yesterday . (Plural)

BUT: someone bought some / many books yesterday . (indefinite quantifiers )

Even in the singular, the indefinite article usually has the zero form as a companion to nouns that refer to something uncountable (unless the object, which is innumerable in itself, is portioned):

I bought a book yesterday . (countable)

I bought ∅ flour yesterday . (innumerable)

BUT: I bought a pound of flour yesterday . (indefinite quantifiers )

Here is an overview of the full inflection paradigm of the indefinite article:

The indefinite article

	Countable nouns ( » countable nouns «)	Innumerable nouns (» uncountable nouns «) of all genera
	Singular	Plural
case	masculine	feminine	neutral
Nominative	a	a	a	∅	∅
Genitive	one	one	one	∅	∅
dative	one	one	one	∅	∅
accusative	one	a	a	∅	∅

The definite article shows in the plural a coincidence of the forms for all three genera:

The definite article

	Singular	Plural
case	masculine	feminine	neutral
Nominative	of the	the	the	the
Genitive	of	of the	of	of the
dative	the	of the	the	the
accusative	the	the	the	the

In the linguistic discussion there is disagreement about whether the specific articles are to be regarded as free morphemes or whether they form an inflectional paradigm to { d- } or { de- } analogous to the demonstrative pronoun { dies- }, i.e. H. the < de-he, the < de-e and the < de-es .

Use in German

If the Germanic original language was still articleless, the use of the article becomes binding in the course of the development of the High German language as a rule for generic names («The woman sleeps; a girl cries»). This is different with personal names and certain predicatives:

«Hans is a baker.»

«Petra is Swiss.»

Furthermore, certain additions do not allow an article: “I drive a car” (but: “He drives a Mercedes” and also “I drive the car to the yard”).

Use of the proprial article

According to the textbook, personal names are only used with an article if there is an adjective in front of the name: pretty Hans, clever Petra . In the Upper German- speaking area, however, it is common to use names (except in the salutation) with the specific article. Ingerid Dal attributes this to the fact that articles about family names penetrated that were actually appellatives, such as Strickære (“Seiler”) in Middle High German .

With a few exceptions, place names are always used without an article, especially those with neutral gender. Masculine and feminine country and regional names, on the other hand, are always used with a proprial article, e.g. E.g .: Slovakia, Vaud, Lebanon, the Ruhr area . In terms of regional language, this also applies to certain neutral regional names, e.g. Burgundy, Piedmont, Friuli, Tyrol, Vorarlberg, and numerous Swiss landscapes and valleys such as Bergell, Gaster, Ticino and Valais in Swiss High German .

River and mountain names always have a proprial article in German, e.g. E.g. the Elbe, the Amazon, the Schneekoppe, the Mount Everest .

Articlelessness

Articlelessness can also be found in a large number of proverbs and formulaic connections: “house and yard”; «Man and Mouse». Abstracts and names of substances can also be used as a subject without an article, without changing the meaning: “(The) beauty passes”; «(The) money rules the world». These are relics of the older articleless use. In this context are also poems that were supposed to reproduce stylistically traditional folk songs: «Boy spoke — Röslein struggled.»

Alternatively, instead of the article, other determinants can be used, such as none / this / that / some / everyone / mine , etc. Complete articlelessness is subject to conditions such as those mentioned in New High German.

literature

• Willy Birkenmaier: Article functions in an articleless language. Studies of Nominal Determination in Russian . In: Forum Slavicum . tape 34 . Munich 1979 (on the reproduction of the German article in Russian).
• Hansjörg Bisle-Müller: Article words in German. Semantic and pragmatic aspects of their use . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-484-30267-4 (on the use of articles within a pragmatic theory of the coordination of shared knowledge).
• Karl Bühler : Language theory: the representation function of language . 3. Edition. Fischer, Jena 1934, § 20. The functions of the article.
• Karl Bühler: Language theory: the representation function of language (=  UTB . Volume 1159 ). Reprint of the 3rd edition. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 1999, § 20. The functions of the article, p. 303-315 .
• Wolfgang Gladrow: The determination of the noun in Russian and German. A confrontational study. Leipzig 1979 (on the reproduction of the German article in Russian).
• Elvira Glaser : Syntactic Space Images . In: Franz Patocka, Peter Ernst (ed.): Dialect geography of the future. Files of the 2nd Congress of the International Society for Dialectology of German (IGDD) . Stuttgart 2008, p. 85–111 (for the distribution of the proprial article in Europe).
• Hans-Jürgen Grimm, Gertraud Heinrich: The article . VEB Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1976 (thorough presentation for foreign language teaching without great theoretical demands).
• Hans-Jürgen Grimm: Lexicon for article usage . 1987.
• Hans-Jürgen Grimm: Investigation into article usage in German . VEB Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1986 (more scientifically demanding than Grimm / Heinrich [1976], also includes German-Russian and German-Czech comparisons).
• Gerhard Helbig , Joachim Buscha: German grammar . A handbook for the foreigners’ course. VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1979, OCLC 760569507 .
• Nikolaus P. Himmelmann : Deiktikon, article, noun phrase . On the emergence of syntactic structure (=  linguistic work . Volume 362 ). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-484-30362-X , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201607043933 (Zugl .: Köln, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1994).
• Gottfried Kolde: The article in German factual nominal . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1989, ISBN 3-484-31096-0 (very thorough and scientifically broadly based presentation of the use of articles for descriptions of facts).
• Ekkehard König : Definite articles and their uses . In: Aspects of linguistic variation, ed. By Daniel Van Olmen & Tanja Mortelmans . 2018, p. 165-184 , doi : 10.1515 / 9783110607963-006 .
• Elisabeth Leiss: Article and Aspect . The grammatical pattern of definiteness (=  Studia linguistica Germanica . Volume 55 ). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000, ISBN 3-11-016718-2 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201606205552 .
• Tsugio Sekiguchi : 冠詞 意味 形態 的 背景 よ り 見 た る ド イ ツ 語 冠詞 の 研究 (Kanshi: Imi keitaiteki haikei yori mitaru doitsugo kanshi no kenkyū). 8th edition. 1–3, 三 修 社 (Sansyusya), Tokyo 1983, ISBN 4-384-00751-5 (three-volume work [total of 2304 pages] in Japanese on the meaning and use of the article in German).
• Heinz Vater : The system of article forms in contemporary German . 2nd, improved edition. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-484-10359-0 (a classic, structuralist method).
• Heinz Vater (Ed.): On the syntax of determinants . Narr, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-86057-421-3 (the articles deal with the articles in connection with other determinants such as ‘each’, ‘this’, ‘all’, ‘some’ etc., method: generation grammar).
• Johan van der Auwera (Ed.): The Semantics of Determiners . 1980.

Web links

Wiktionary: Articles  — explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• 
  “The Article” — Canoonet’s online grammar
  
• List of specific articles in many languages ​​from Swedish Wikipedia
• Chapter on the definite article in the World Atlas of Language Structures (English)
• Matthew S. Dryer, Martin Haspelmath: Chapter on the indefinite article in the World Atlas of Language Structures. In: wals.info. (English).
• Gerhard Brugger: Generic interpretations and expletive determiner. (PDF; 1.1 MB) (No longer available online.) In: lear.unive.it. 1993, archived from the original on November 13, 2013 .
• deutsch-im-blick.de — Declining articles

Footnotes

1. ↑ Source: Metzler, Bisle-Müller, Helbig.
2. ↑ Further information / explanation of the null article. In: Canoonet , accessed September 23, 2019.
3. ^ Wilhelm Pape , Max Sengebusch (arrangement): Concise dictionary of the Greek language . 3rd edition, 6th impression. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1914, DNB  36701226X , p. 563 , col. b (ancient Greek, German, zeno.org [PNG; accessed October 16, 2018]).
4. ↑ See Gladrow and Birkenmaier in the literature list .
5. ↑ See Glaser 2008 in the literature list .
6. ^ Kurt Meyer : Swiss dictionary. That’s what we say in Switzerland. Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart / Vienna 2006, p. 38; Hans Bickel , Christoph Landolt : Swiss High German. Dictionary of the standard language in German-speaking Switzerland. Edited by the Swiss Association for the German Language. 2., completely revised and exp. Edition. Dudenverlag, Berlin 2018, p. 105.
   

The word “THE” is a Definite Article and an Adverb.Take a look at the definitions and examples below and you will see how this little word can be used as different parts of speech.

 1. Definite Article

This word “The” is considered as a definite article because it is used to refer to something specific. It is also placed before a noun, if the audience already knows what is being referred to (there is only one or the subject has already been mentioned). For example, let’s look at the sentence below:

“The pope will visit the Philippines in 2015.”

“The” is used because there is only one pope in the whole world.

Definition:

a. used to indicate a person or thing that has already been mentioned or seen or is clearly understood from the situation

• Joe is the tallest boy in class.

b. used to refer to things or people that are common in daily life

• The moon is aligned between the Sun and the Earth.

c. used to refer to things that occur in nature

• The inner planets of the solar system are denser compared to the outer planets.

2. Adverb

Aside from acting as a definite article, “The” can also be used as an adverb. Take for example the sentence below:

“Since getting a new computer, he was able to produce outputs all the quicker.”

In that sentence, “the” serves as an adverb because it modifies the adjective quicker. Take note that the word can only be used as an adverb if it is used together with an adjective or another adverb which is in the comparative degree.

Definition:

a. than before: than otherwise —used before a comparative

• The sooner the better.

b. to what extent

• Mercury is the most cratered planet in our Solar System.

c. beyond all others

• The more the merrier.