Articles in European languages
An
article is a
word that
combines with a
noun to indicate the type of
reference being made by the noun, and may also specify
the volume or numerical scope of that reference. The
articles in the
English language
are
the and
a (the latter with variant form
an). An article is sometimes called a
noun
marker, although this is generally considered to be an archaic
term.
Articles are traditionally considered to form a separate
part of speech. Linguists place them in the
class of
determiner.
Articles can have various functions:
- 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.
Logic of definite articles
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. Also in English word order, articles
precede any
adjectives that modify the
applicable noun.
In French, the masculine definite article
le (meaning
the) is contracted with a following word if that word
begins with a vowel sound. When the French words
de and
le are to be used sequentially (meaning
of the),
the word
du is used instead, in addition to the above
mentioned use of
du as a partitive article.
In various languages other than English, the form of the article
may vary according to the
grammatical
gender,
number or
case of the noun it combines with. (In some
languages the article may be the only indicator of the case,
e.g.
Der Hut des Napoleon, Napoleon's hat.) Many languages
do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating
old vs. new information, such as
topic-comment constructions.
The
The word
the is the only
definite article in the
English language, and the most frequently
used word in English.
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.
In normative spoken English, it takes two forms, the vowel being a
schwa before a word starting with a consonant,
and otherwise an sound.
Etymology
Linguists believe that the common ancestor of the
Indo-European languages (i.e. the
Proto-Indo-European
language) did not have a definite article. 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, especially in Slavic languages —
Russian,
Polish and
Czech, etc. (the only Slavic languages that
have articles are
Bulgarian and
Macedonian), nor in the Baltic
languages—-
Latvian,
Lithuanian and
Latgalian.
Classical Greek
has a definite article, but
Homeric
Greek did not. In the
etymologies of
these and many other languages, the definite article arose from a
demonstrative
pronoun or
adjective changing its
usage;
compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative "ille" (meaning "that")
in the
Romance languages, becoming
French le,
la,
l’, and
les,
Spanish el,
la,
lo,
los, and
las,
Italian il,
la,
lo,
l’,
i,
gli, and
le, and
Portuguese
o,
os,
a, and
as.
In some languages, such as Scandinavian, Bulgarian, Macedonian
(Macedonian has three defined articles) or
Romanian, the definite article is not
always a separate word but is sometimes attached to the end of the
noun it governs (i.e. it is postfixed):
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)
Romanian:
drum, road;
drumul, the road
Macedonian:
столот (stolot) the chair,
столов
(stolov) this chair,
столон (stolon) that chair,
The and
that are common developments from the
same
Old English system. Old
English had a definite article
se, in the masculine
gender,
seo (feminine),
and
þæt (neuter). In
Middle English these had all
merged into
þe, the ancestor of
the
Modern English word
the.
In Middle English,
the (þe) was frequently abbreviated as
a
þ with a small
e above it, similar to the
abbreviation for
that, which was a
þ with a small
t above it. During the latter
Middle English and
Early Modern English periods, the
letter
Thorn (þ) in its common
script, or
cursive, form came to resemble a
y shape. As such the use of a
y with an
e above it as an abbreviation became common. This can
still be seen in reprints of the 1611 edition of the
King James Version of the
Bible in places such as Romans 15:29, or in the
Mayflower Compact. Note that the article
was never pronounced with a
y sound, even when so written.
(However the modern, 19th and 20th century pseudo-archaic usage
such as "
Ye Olde Englishe Tea Shoppe" can be
pronounced with a
y sound.)
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 (with a
dental t) or as a
glottal stop, usually written in
eye dialect as ; 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 (
voiced dental fricative),
the is pronounced with a
voiced dental plosive, as in or
).
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). 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, 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 [7801] and CIA World
Factbook [7802] 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.
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 (as "y" in "easy") before words beginning
with vowels and in cases of proper nouns or
emphasis.
See also
References
- Articles, Determiners and Quantifiers
- The Use and Non-Use of Articles
- [1] Master, Peter (1997) "The English Article
System: acquisition, function, and pedagogy" in: System,
Volume 25, Issue 2, pp. 215–232
- Greenbaum, Sidney (1996) The Oxford English Grammar.
Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-861250-8
- Disterheft, Dorothy (2004) Advanced Grammar. Upper
Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-048820-8
- Swan, Michael How English Works, p. 25
- Ukraine or "the Ukraine"? by Andrew Gregorovich
InfoUkes.com
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
