An article is a word that is used 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
and a/an, and in (in some
contexts) . 'An' and 'a' are modern forms of the Old English 'an', which in
Anglian dialects was the number 'one' (compare 'on', in Saxon dialects) and
survived into Modern Scots as the number 'ane'. Both 'on' (respelled 'one' by
the Normans) and 'an' survived into Modern English, with 'one' used as the
number and 'an' ('a', before nouns that begin with a consonant sound) as an
indefinite article.
Traditionally in English, an article is usually
considered to be a type of adjective. In some languages, articles are a special part of
speech, which cannot easily be combined with other parts of speech. It is also
possible for articles to be part of another part of speech category such as a determiner, an English part of speech
category that combines articles and demonstratives (such as 'this' and 'that').
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]
Types
Articles
are usually characterized as either definite
or indefinite. A few languages
with well-developed systems of articles may distinguish additional subtypes.
Within
each type, languages may have various forms of each article, according to
grammatical attributes such as gender, number, or case, or according to adjacent sounds.
Definite article
A
definite article indicates that its noun is a particular one (or ones)
identifiable to the listener. It may be something that the speaker has already
mentioned, or it may be something uniquely specified. The definite article in
English, for both singular and plural nouns, is the.
The children know the fastest way home.
The
sentence above refers to specific children and a specific way home; it
contrasts with the much more general observation that:
Children know the fastest way home.
The
latter sentence refers to children in general, perhaps all or most of them.
Likewise,
Give
me the book.
refers to
a specific book whose identity is known or obvious to the listener; as such it
has a markedly different meaning from
Give
me a book.
which
does not specify what book is to be given.
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.
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 is strictly speaking superfluous. Some languages
also use definite articles with personal names. For example, such use is standard in Portuguese: a Maria, literally: "the Maria". It also occurs
colloquially in Spanish, German and other languages.
Indefinite article
An indefinite article indicates that its
noun is not a particular one (or ones) identifiable to the listener. It may be
something that the speaker is mentioning for the first time, or its precise
identity may be irrelevant or hypothetical, or the speaker may be making a
general statement about any such thing. English uses a/an, from the Old English forms of the number 'one', as its
primary indefinite article. The form an
is used before words that begin with a vowel sound (even if spelled with an
initial consonant, as in an hour),
and a before words that begin
with a consonant sound (even if spelled with a vowel, as in a European).
She
had a house so large that an elephant would get lost without a map.
Before
some words beginning with a pronounced (not silent) h in an unstressed first syllable, such as hallucination, hilarious, historic(al), horrendous,
and horrific, some (especially
older) British writers prefer to use an
over a (an historical event, etc.).[3] An
is also preferred before hotel
by some writers of British English (probably reflecting the relatively recent
adoption of the word from French, where the h is not pronounced).[4] The use of "an" before words beginning
with an unstressed "h" is more common generally in British English
than American.[4] American writers normally use a in all these cases, although there
are occasional uses of an historic(al)
in American English.[5] According to the New Oxford Dictionary of English,
such use is increasingly rare in British English too.[3] Unlike British English, American English typically
uses an before herb, since the h in this word is silent for most
Americans. The correct usage in respect of the term "hereditary peer"
was the subject of an amendment debated in the UK Parliament.[6]
The word some is used as a functional plural
of a/an. "An apple"
never means more than one apple. "Give me some apples" indicates more than one is desired but without
specifying a quantity. This finds comparison in Spanish, where the singular
indefinite article 'un/una' ("one") is completely indistinguishable
from the unit number, except where it has a plural form ('unos/unas'): Dame una manzana" ("Give me an
apple") > "Dame unas
manzanas" ("Give me some apples"). However, some also serves as a quantifier
rather than as a plural article, as in "There are some apples there, but not many."
Some also serves as a singular indefinite article, as
in "There is some person
on the porch". This usage differs from the usage of a(n) in that some indicates that the identity of the noun is unknown to both
the listener and the speaker, while a(n)
indicates that the identity is unknown to the listener without specifying whether
or not it is known to the speaker. Thus There
is some person on the porch indicates indefiniteness to both the
listener and the speaker, while There
is a person on the porch indicates indefiniteness to the listener but
gives no information as to whether the speaker knows the person's identity.
Partitive article
A partitive article is a type of
indefinite article used with a mass noun such as water,
to indicate a non-specific quantity of it. Partitive articles are used in French and Italian in addition to definite and indefinite articles.
The nearest equivalent in English is some,
although this is considered a determiner and not an article.
French: Voulez-vous du
café ?
Do you
want (some) coffee? (or, dialectally but more
accurately, Do you want some of this coffee?)
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).'[7]
Negative article
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 is an island.
No dogs are allowed here.
Zero article
See also:
Zero article in English
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.[8] 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.
Evolution
Articles
have developed independently in many different language families across the
globe. Generally, articles develop over time usually by specialization of
certain adjectives.
Joseph Greenberg in Universals of Human Language[9]
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.
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 demonstratives ille (masculine) and illa
(feminine).
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. Colognian prepositions articles such as in
dat Auto, or et Auto, the car; the first being
specifically selected, focussed, newly introduced, while the latter is not
selected, unfocussed, already known, general, or generic.
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 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, e.g., transforming the original a napron into the modern an apron.
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