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Article (grammar)
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An article (abbreviated art) is a word (or prefix or suffix) that is used with a
noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify
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
certain contexts) some. 'An' and 'a' are modern forms of the Old English 'an', w
hich 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' b
y the Normans) and 'an' survived into Modern English, with 'one' used as the num
ber and 'an' ('a', before nouns that begin with a consonant sound) as an indefin
ite article.
Traditionally in English, an article is usually considered to be a type of adjec
tive. In some languages, articles are a special part of speech, which cannot eas
ily 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' an
d 'that').
In languages that employ articles, every common noun, with some exceptions, is e
xpressed with a certain definiteness (e.g., definite or indefinite), just as man
y languages express every noun with a certain grammatical number (e.g., singular
or plural). Every noun must be accompanied by the article, if any, correspondin
g to its definiteness, and the lack of an article (considered a zero article) it
self specifies a certain definiteness. This is in contrast to other adjectives a
nd determiners, which are typically optional. This obligatory nature of articles
makes them among the most common words in many languagesin English, for example,
the most frequent word is the.[1]
Articles are usually characterized as either definite or indefinite.[2] A few la
nguages with well-developed systems of articles may distinguish additional subty
pes. Within each type, languages may have various forms of each article, accordi
ng to grammatical attributes such as gender, number, or case, or according to ad
jacent sounds.
Contents [hide]
1 Definite article
2 Indefinite article
3 Partitive article
4 Negative article

5 Zero article
6 Variation among languages
7 Evolution
7.1 Definite articles
7.2 Indefinite articles
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
Definite article[edit]
A definite article indicates that its noun is a particular one (or ones) identif
iable to the listener. It may be something that the speaker has already mentione
d, or it may be something uniquely specified. The definite article in English, f
or 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 contr
asts with the much more general observation that:
Children know the fastest way home.
The latter sentence refers to children in general and their specific ways home.
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 am
ong other classes:
The cabbage white butterfly lays its eggs on members of the Brassica genus.
However, recent developments show that definite articles are morphological eleme
nts 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. [3] [4]
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, t
he Hebrides. In these cases, the definite article may be considered superfluous.
Its presence can be accounted for by the assumption that they are shorthands fo
r a larger phrase in which the name is a specifier, i.e. the Amazon River, the H
ebrides Islands. Where the nouns in such longer phrases cannot be omitted, the d
efinite article is universally kept: the United States, the People's Republic of
China. This distinction can sometimes become a political matter: the former usa
ge 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 formal mentions of its name omit the article. Similar shifts in usage
have occurred in the names of Sudan and both Congo (Brazzaville) and (Kinshasa);
a move in the other direction occurred with The Gambia.
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, and is sometimes heard in I
talian. In Hungary it is considered to be a Germanism.
Indefinite article[edit]
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 u
ses a/an, from the Old English forms of the number 'one', as its primary indefin
ite article. The form an is used before words that begin with a vowel sound (eve
n 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 fi
rst syllable, such as hallucination, hilarious, historic(al), horrendous, and ho
rrific, some (especially older) British writers prefer to use an over a (an hist
orical event, etc.).[5] An is also preferred before hotel by some writers of Bri
tish English (probably reflecting the relatively recent adoption of the word fro
m French, where the h is not pronounced).[6] The use of "an" before words beginn
ing with an unstressed "h" is more common generally in British English than Amer
ican.[6] American writers normally use a in all these cases, although there are
occasional uses of an historic(al) in American English.[7] According to the New
Oxford Dictionary of English, such use is increasingly rare in British English t
oo.[5] Unlike British English, American English typically uses an before herb, s
ince the h in this word is silent for most Americans. The correct usage in respe
ct of the term "hereditary peer" was the subject of an amendment debated in the
UK Parliament.[8]
The word some is used as a functional plural of a/an.[citation needed] "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 indistingu
ishable from the unit number, except where it has a plural form ('unos/unas'): D
ame una manzana" ("Give me an apple") > "Dame unas manzanas" ("Give me some appl
es"). 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 o
n the porch". This usage differs from the usage of a(n) in that some indicates t
hat the identity of the noun is unknown to both the listener and the speaker, wh
ile a(n) indicates that the identity is unknown to the listener without specifyi
ng whether or not it is known to the speaker. Thus There is some person on the p
orch 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 i
nformation as to whether the speaker knows the person's identity.
Partitive article[edit]
A partitive article is a type of indefinite article used with a mass noun such a
s 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 neare
st equivalent in English is some, although this is considered a determiner and n
ot an article.
French: Veux tu du caf ?
Do you want (some) coffee? (or, dialectally but more accurately, Do you want som
e of this coffee?)
See also more information about the French partitive article.
Haida has a partitive article (suffixed -gyaa) referring to "part of something o
r... 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).'[9]
Negative article[edit]
A negative article specifies none of its noun, and can thus be regarded as neith
er 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 fulfille

d 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 London.
Zero article[edit]
See also: Zero article in English
The zero article is the absence of an article. In languages having
ticle, the lack of an article specifically indicates that the noun
. Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles
ing a determiner.[10] In English, the zero article rather than the
used with plurals and mass nouns, although the word "some" can be
definite plural article.

a definite ar
is indefinite
to nouns lack
indefinite is
used as an in

Visitors end up walking in mud.

Variation among languages[edit]
Articles in languages in and around Europe
indefinite and definite articles
only definite articles
indefinite and suffixed definite articles
only suffixed definite articles
no articles
Note that although the Saami languages spoken in northern parts of Norway and Sw
eden lack articles, Norwegian and Swedish are the majority languages in this are
a. Note also that although the Irish and Scottish Gaelic languages lack indefini
te articles they too are minority languages in this area, with English being the
main spoken language.
Articles are found in many Indo-European, Semitic, and Polynesian languages but
formally are absent from some large languages of the world, such as Indonesian,
Japanese, Hindi and Russian.
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 ha
ve definite or indefinite articles; there is no article in Latin, Sanskrit, nor
in some modern Indo-European languages, such as the families of Slavic languages
(not including Bulgarian, Macedonian and Torlakian, which are rather distinctiv
e among the Slavic languages in terms of grammar) and Baltic languages. Although
Classical Greek has a definite article (which has survived into Modern Greek an
d which bears strong resemblance to the German definite article), the earlier Ho
meric Greek used this article largely as a pronoun or demonstrative. Articles de
veloped 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 s
hades of meaning; for example, French and Italian have a partitive article used
for indefinite mass nouns, whereas Colognian has two distinct sets of definite a
rticles indicating focus and uniqueness, and Macedonian uses definite articles i
n a demonstrative sense, with a tripartite distinction (proximal, medial, distal
) based on distance from the speaker or interlocutor. The words this and that (a
nd their plurals, these and those) can be understood in English as, ultimately,
forms of the definite article the (whose declension in Old English included thae
s, an ancestral form of this/that and these/those).
In many languages, the form of the article may vary according to the gender, num
ber, or case of its noun. In some languages the article may be the only indicati
on of the case. Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other way
s of indicating old versus new information, such as topiccomment constructions.
Articles used in some of the world's languages

Language
definite article
indefinite article
partitive articl
e
Albanian
-a, -ja, -i, -u, -t, -t (all suffixes) nj
disa
Arabic al- or el
(prefix)
Kurdish -eke
-ekan -k
-ank hend, birr
Hebrew ha- ( prefix)
Greek , ,
, ,
, ,
Icel
dc
-()

, -()
, -(), -()
, -
um, -()

, -
u, -()
s, -()

r
, -
r, -
r, -u
um, -

( ll suffxes)
E
gls e
,

sme
Germ
der, de, d s
des, dem, de

e
, e
e, e
er, e
es
e
em, e
e

Duc
de, e (')
ee
('
)
T m zg
__
y
, y 
s
, s

Sp
s el, l , l
ls, l s
u
, u

u
s, u
s
lg, lg
, lgu
s, lgu
, lgu
s, lgue

,
Pruguese
s, s um, um
u
s, um s
lg, lgum, lgu
s, lgum , lgum s, lgum
Fre
c le, l , l'
les
u
, u
e
des
du, de l , de l'
des
I l
l, l, l , l'
u
', u
, u
, u

del, dell, dell , dell'
, gl, le
de, degl, degl' , delle
Rm


- , -(u)l
-(), -e, -(e)le ( ll suffxes)
u
, , u
, u

Hu
g r

, z egy
I
e bve ex mples, e rcle lw ys precedes s
u
(w e excep

f e Ar bc 
wee

d e Hebrew ha-). In some languages, however, the defin
ite article is not always a separate word, but may be suffixed, attached to the
end of its noun as a suffix. For example,

Albanian: zog, a bird; zogu, the bird

Aramaic: , peace; , the peace
Note: Aramaic is written from right to left, so an Aleph is added to the end of
the word.
Bengali: "Boi", book; "Boiti/Boita/Boikhana" : "The Book"
Romanian: drum, road; drumul, the road (the article is just "l", "u" is a "conne
ction vowel" Romanian: vocal de legtur)
Icelandic: hestur, horse; hesturinn, the horse
Persian: sib, apple; sibe, the apple
Danish: stol, chair; stolen, the chair
Swedish and Norwegian: hus, house; huset, the house; if there is an adjective: d
et gamle (N)/gamla (S) huset, the old house
Bulgarian: stol, chair; stolt, the chair (subject); stola, the chair (obje
Macedonian: stol, chair; stolot, the chair; stolov, this chair; sto
Example of prefixed definite article:
Hebrew: , transcribed as yeled, a boy; , transcribed as ha-yeled, the boy
A different way, limited to the definite article, is used by Latvian. The noun d
oesn't change but the adjective can be defined or undefined: galds, a table / th
e table; balts galds, a white table; baltais galds, the white table.

Evolution[edit]
Articles have developed independently in many different language families across
the globe. Generally, articles develop over time usually by specialization of c
ertain adjectives.
Joseph Greenberg in Universals of Human Language[11] 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 par
t of nouns other than proper names and more recent borrowings. Eventually articl
es may evolve anew from demonstratives.
Definite articles[edit]
Definite articles typically arise from demonstratives meaning that. For example,
the definite articles in the Romance languagese.g., el, il, le, laderive from the
Latin demonstratives ille (masculine) and illa (feminine).
The English definite article the, written e in Middle English, derives from an Ol
d English demonstrative, which, according to gender, was written se (masculine),
seo (feminine) (e and eo in the Northumbrian dialect), or t (neuter). The neuter fo
rm t 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
e, where the letter thorn () 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 (stolot), the chair; (sto
chair; and (stolon), that chair. These derive from the Common Slavic demonstratives *
t "this, that", *ov "this here" and *on "that over there, yonder" respectively. Col
ognian prepositions articles such as in dat Auto, or et Auto, the car; the first
being specifically selected, focussed, newly introduced, while the latter is no
t selected, unfocussed, already known, general, or generic. Standard Basque dist
inguishes between proximal and distal definite articles in the plural (dialectal
ly, 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 def
inite article, whereas the proximal form (with infix -o-, derived from the proxi
mal demonstrative hau-/hon-) is marked and indicates some kind of (spatial or ot
herwise) close relationship between the speaker and the referent (e.g., it may i
mply that the speaker is included in the referent): etxeak ("the houses") vs. et
xeok ("these houses [of ours]"), euskaldunak ("the Basque speakers") vs. euskald
unok ("we, the Basque speakers").
Indefinite articles[edit]
Indefinite articles typically arise from adjectives meaning one. For example, th
e indefinite articles in the Romance languagese.g., un, una, unederive from the La
tin adjective unus. Partitive articles, however, derive from Vulgar Latin de ill
o, meaning (some) of the.
The English indefinite article an is derived from the same root as one. The -n c
ame to be dropped before consonants, giving rise to the shortened form a. The ex
istence of both forms has led to many cases of juncture loss, for example transf
orming 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
References[edit]
Jump up ^ "The 500 Most Commonly Used Words in the English Language". World Engl
ish. Archived from the original on 13 January 2007. Retrieved 2007-01-14.
Jump up ^ The Use and Non-Use of Articles
Jump up ^ Daz Collazos, Ana Mara. https://www.academia.edu/6254347/Spanish_indefin
ite_articles_in_the_Nikkei_as_Colombian-Japanese_community
Jump up ^ Recasens, Taul and Mart http://www.researchgate.net/publication/22874811
5_First-mention_definites_more_than_exceptional_cases
^ Jump up to: a b New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1999, usage note for an: "Th
ere is still some divergence of opinion over the form of the indefinite article
to use preceding certain words beginning with h- when the first syllable is unst
ressed: a historical document or an historical document; a hotel or an hotel. The for
epends on whether the initial h is sounded or not: an was common in the 18th and
19th centuries, because the initial h was commonly not pronounced for these wor
ds. In standard modern English the norm is for the h to be pronounced in words l
ike hotel and historical, and therefore the indefinite article a is used; howeve
r, the older form, with the silent h and the indefinite article an, is still enc
ountered, especially among older speakers."
^ Jump up to: a b Brown Corpus and Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus, quoted in Peter
s (2004: 1)
Jump up ^ Algeo, p. 49.
Jump up ^ www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/ldhansrd/vo990427/text/9042
7-43.htm.
Jump up ^ Lawrence, Erma (1977). Haida dictionary. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Lang
uage Center. p. 64.
Jump up ^ ScienceDirect Master, Peter (1997) "The English Article System: acquis
ition, function, and pedagogy" in: System, Volume 25, Issue 2, pp. 215232
Jump up ^ Genetic Linguistics
External links[edit]
Wikisource has the text of the 1921 Colliers Encyclopedia article Artic
le.
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