Article (grammar)

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An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the, a, and an.

Among the classical parts of speech, articles are considered a special category of adjectives. Some modern linguists prefer to classify them within a separate part of speech, determiners.

In languages that employ articles, every common noun, with some exceptions, is expressed with a certain definiteness (e.g., definite or indefinite), just as many languages express every noun with a certain grammatical number (e.g., singular or plural). Every noun must be accompanied by the article, if any, corresponding to its definiteness, and the lack of an article (considered a zero article) itself specifies a certain definiteness. This is in contrast to other adjectives and determiners, which are typically optional. This obligatory nature of articles makes them among the most common words in many languages—in English, for example, the most frequent word is the.^[1]

Contents 1 Types 2 Variation among languages 3 Etymology 3.1 Definite articles 3.2 Indefinite articles 4 Syntax 4.1 The 4.2 Reduction and omission 4.3 Geographic uses 4.4 Pronunciation 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Types

Articles can have various functions:^[2]

• A definite article (English the) is used before singular and plural nouns that refer to a particular member of a group.

The cat is on the red mat.

• An indefinite article (English a, an) is used before singular nouns that refer to any member of a group.

A cat is a mammal.

• A partitive article indicates an indefinite quantity of a mass noun; there is no partitive article in English, though the quantifiers some or any often have that function.

French: Voulez-vous du café ? ("Would you like some coffee?" or "Do you want coffee?")

• A zero article is the absence of an article (e.g. English indefinite plural), used in some languages in contrast with the presence of one.

Cats love fish.

Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner.^[3]

[edit] Variation among languages

Among the world's most widely spoken languages, articles are found almost exclusively in Indo-European and Semitic languages; Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Bengali, Malay, and Russian have no articles, strictly speaking, even though certain words may optionally be used like articles if needed.

Linguists believe that the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages (i.e., the Proto-Indo-European language) did not have articles. Most of the languages in this family do not have definite or indefinite articles; there is no article in Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, nor in some modern Indo-European languages, such as the Baltic languages and most Slavic languages. Although Classical Greek has a definite article, the earlier Homeric Greek did not. Articles developed independently in several language families.

Not all languages have both definite and indefinite articles. Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew have only a definite article; having only an indefinite article, on the other hand, is far less common. 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, while Macedonian uses definite articles in a demonstrative sense, distinguishing this from that.

In many languages, the form of the article may vary according to the grammatical gender, number, or case of its noun. (In some languages the article may be the only indicator of the case, e.g., German Der Hut des Napoleon, Napoleon's hat.) Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old versus new information, such as topic-comment constructions.

Articles used in the world's most widely spoken languages

Language	definite article	indefinite article
Arabic	al-	(none)
English	the	a, an
German	der, die, das	ein, eine
Spanish	el, la, los, las	un, una
Portuguese	o, a, os, as	um, uma
French	le, la, les	un, une partitive: du, de la, des

In the above examples, the article always precedes its noun. In some languages, however, the definite article is not always a separate word, but may be postfixed, attached to the end of its noun as a suffix. For example,

• Romanian: drum, road; drumul, the road
• Icelandic: hestur, horse; hesturinn, the horse
• Norwegian: stol, chair; stolen, the chair
• Bulgarian: стол stol, chair; столът stolǎt, the chair (subject); стола stola, the chair (object)
• Macedonian: столот (stolot) the chair, столов (stolov) this chair, столон (stolon) that chair

[edit] Etymology

Articles have developed independently in many different language families across the globe. Generally, more ancient languages tend to lack articles, and articles develop over time usually by specialization of certain adjectives.

[edit] Definite articles

Definite articles typically arise from demonstratives meaning that. For example, the definite articles in the Romance languages—e.g., el, il, le, la—derive from the Latin demonstrative ille.

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), 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 þ^e, 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.

[edit] Indefinite articles

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 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, e.g. transforming the original a napron into the modern an apron.

[edit] Syntax

In English, a definite article is mostly used to refer to an object or person that has been previously introduced. For example:

At last they came to a piece of rising ground, from which they plainly distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth bear.... Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt over the bear's head.

— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, appendix D

In this example, a bear becomes the bear because a "mammoth bear" had been previously introduced into the narrative, and no other bear was involved in the story. Only previously introduced subjects, and unique subjects, where the speaker can assume that the audience is aware of the identity of the referent (The government has increased tax) typically take definite articles in English.

By contrast, the indefinite article is used in situations where a new subject is being introduced, and the speaker assumes that the hearer is not yet familiar with the subject:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

— A traditional nursery rhyme

Reflecting its historical derivation from the number word one, the English indefinite article can only be used with singular count nouns. For mass nouns, or for plurals, adjectives or adjective phrases like some or a few substitute for it, or it is omitted. In English, pronouns, nouns already having another non-number determiner, and proper nouns usually do not use articles. Otherwise in English, unlike many other languages, singular count nouns take an article; either a, an, or the.^[4] Also in English word order, articles precede any adjectives that modify the applicable noun.^[5]

[edit] The

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008)

The word the is the only definite article in the English language, and the most frequently used word in English.^[6]

The article "the" is used with singular and plural, and countable and uncountable nouns when both the speaker and listener would know the thing or idea already. The article the is often used as the very first part of a noun phrase in English. For example:

The end of time begins next Tuesday, at a quarter past four, just after fish and chips.

Here, "the end of time" is a noun phrase. The use of the signals that the reference is to a specific and unique instance of the concept (such as person, object, or idea) expressed in the noun phrase. Here, the implication is that there may be but are not multiple 'ends of time'; which 'end of time' it is that is being referred to is not ambiguous, because time can (supposedly) only end once.

The time is 3:29 p.m.

There are many times, but the meaning here is the time now, of which (at the moment the sentence was produced) there is only one.

[edit] Reduction and omission

In news headlines and informal writing, such as notes or diaries, the definite article and some other particles are often omitted, for example, "Must pick up prescription at pharmacy today."

In some Northern England dialects of English, the is pronounced [t̪ə] (with a dental t) or as a glottal stop, usually written in eye dialect as <t>; in some dialects it reduces to nothing. This is known as definite article reduction; see that article for further details.

In dialects that do not have /ð/ (voiced dental fricative), the is pronounced with a voiced dental plosive, as in /d̪ə/ or /d̪iː/).

[edit] Geographic uses

In English most cities and countries never take the definite article, but there are many that do. It is commonly used with many country names that derive from names of island groups (the Philippines), mountain ranges (the Lebanon), deserts (the Sudan), seas, rivers and geographic regions (the Middle East).^[7] Such use is declining, but for some countries it remains common. Since the independence of Ukraine (or the Ukraine), most style guides have advised dropping the article^[8], in part because the Ukrainian Government was concerned about a similar issue involving prepositions. Another example is Argentina, which is now more usual than 'the Argentine', which is old fashioned, although others continue, such as The Bronx and The Hague.

The definite article is always used for countries whose names are descriptions of the form of the state rather than being purely geographical; for example, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Czech Republic.

The U.S. Department of State [2] and CIA World Factbook [3] show the definite article with only two countries: The Bahamas and The Gambia.

Similarly, in other languages some geographic names take the article while others do not: die Schweiz, Switzerland, in German; les Pays-Bas, the Netherlands or Low Countries, in French.

[edit] Pronunciation

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, "the" is pronounced with a schwa (as in "uh") before words beginning with consonants (e.g. b, c, d, f), and usually with a different vowel sound /i/ (as "y" in "easy") before words beginning with vowels and in cases of proper nouns or emphasis.^[9]

[edit] See also

Look up the in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up an in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• A and an
• Al- (definite article in Arabic)
• Definite description
• Definiteness

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• WALS - Feature/Chapter 38: Indefinite Articles
• WALS - Feature/Chapter 37: Definite Articles
• Vietnamese learners mastering english articles
• "The Definite Article: Acknowledging 'The' in Index Entries," Glenda Browne, The Indexer, vol. 22, no. 3 April 2001, pp. 119–22.
• Low MH 2005: "The Phenomenon of the Word THE in English — discourse functions and distribution patterns" — a dissertation that surveys the use of the word 'the' in English text.
• When Do You Use Articles: A, An, The