1 : grammatical article
2 : The little words are important
3 : Age of the speaker
4 : See also
An article is a word that is put next to a noun to indicate the type
of reference being made to the noun.
Articles can have various functions:
- a definite article (English the) indicates that the noun refers to a specific thing that the speaker has in mind (The chair is broken)
- an indefinite article (English a or some) indicates that the noun refers to something of the kind, but the particular instance isn't important (Block the door with a chair).
- a partitive article indicates an indefinite quantity of a mass noun; there is no partitive article in English, though the word some often has that function. An example is French du / de la, as in ''Voulez-vous 'du' café ?'' ("Do you want 'some' coffee?")
Some languages such as Chinese, classical Latin, and the constructed language Toki Pona rarely use articles, indicating such distinctions in other ways or not at all. Some languages, including Japanese and Russian do not have them at all (in Russian, if it is absolutely necessary, you can use "one" and "that" in contexts where other languages would use an indefinite and definite article). Other languages, including Arabic, Welsh and the constructed language Esperanto, have definite articles, but no indefinite articles.
Many European languages that have grammatical gender usually have their article agree with the gender of the noun (French le 'the' masculine, la feminine).
The articles in these languages not only distinguish between the genders, but can indicate different meanings depending on the article used, as in Spanish, where la cólera is "anger" and el cólera is "cholera", or French, where "la puce" is the flea and "le puce" is the thumb, or German, where die Steuer is "the tax" and das Steuer is "the steering-wheel", or Swedish, where en plan is 'a plan' and ett plan is 'a plane'.
The use of articles may vary between languages. For example, French uses its definite article in cases where English uses no article, such as in general statements about a mass noun: Le maïs est un grain. ("Maize is a grain."); Ancient Greek uses the definite article with proper names: ho Iesous ("the Jesus"), and, optionally, before both a noun and each of its adjectives: ho páter ho agathòs (literally, "the father the good"; naturally, "the good father").
By the same token, the words used as English articles have other grammatical functions. See A, an, The.
In Scandinavian languages the definite article can be a suffix; examples planen is "the plan", and planet is "the plane" or "the airplane's wing". (en plan is "a plan", and ett plan is "a plane" or "an airplane's wing".) The Romanian language also uses suffixes for articles; for example, consulul is 'the consul'. Macedonian does also; for example, drvo means 'tree', while drvoto means 'the tree'.
==Using the and a in practice==
''The following discussion is meant to give pointers in the uses of the grammatical articles 'the' and 'a' for non-native speakers''
When using the English language, the can be thought of as similar to a little computer cursor. Where the cursor is resting, one's attention also rests.
The chair
It is customary to focus on the word which is following, with the questions 'who', 'where', 'when', 'why', 'how', and then wait for the rest of the sentence, which should complete the meaning:
The chair is
Now it gets interesting - is means NOW, so the listener should pay attention for a current event!
The chair is broken
The sentence is completed; the listener sits on that specific chair at his own peril.
The little words are important
H.S. Wall, a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas, once said that in a mathematical proof, the little words are important, and illustrated it with the statement
''I have 'a' son
which he noted does not necessarily mean that he has only 'one''' son.
Age of the speaker
Finally, the use of a and the in English typically get learned by children who are native speakers before they are age 3; thus writers of English drop the use of the grammatical article at their peril, because some readers who are native speakers of English will thus tend to automatically think of them as poor speakers.
See also
|