Talk:Article (grammar)

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[edit] (untitled)

"Some languages such as Chinese, Russian, classical Latin, and Swahili 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)."

Which category does Russian belong in? I don't know, so I have returned it to the original wording. Kairos 23:32, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, Russian has no articles. But I think that Chinese and Latin have no articles as well? Nikola 08:45, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
At a glance, it looks as if i added "Russian" negligently. I apologize for editing not just boldly, but superficially. --Jerzy(t) 17:26, 2004 Mar 1 (UTC)
Actually, English is one of the few languages that has articles at all. The Grim Reaper 22:11, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
My impression is that in general, Western European languages use articles, and most other languages do not. For example, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, and the Scandiavian languages all do. Swahili, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, and Urdu do not. It seems to me that Arabic is a sort of border case, in that it uses definite articles but usage is significantly different from Western European languages. Can others confirm that this is the pattern? Brianlucas 00:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

"Languages that have grammatical gender usually have their article agree with the gender of the noun (French: le masculine, la feminine)." I don't know if that's true in general, but it's false in Semitic. -phma

I changed the comment about Scandinavian languages using suffixes, because it is probably not true for all of them - e.g Finnish or Saami. It is probably true for Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic. David Martland 23:27 Dec 16, 2002 (UTC)

Finland is a Scandinavian country but Finnish is not a Scandinavian language, nor is Sami. Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, are. Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language. Sami is the language of an indigenous people, no more Scandinavian than Sioux is English. Ortolan88
Finnish, Saami, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are all Scandinavian languages. Icelandic is not Scandinavian. Scandinavian is a geographical grouping; as linguistic affiliation, it is a subgroup of the Germanic language family. A better way of putting this would be: The Scandinavian group of the Germanic languages. This narrows the field down to Danish, Swedish and Norwegian (and by default, Icelandic, due to the nature of its descent from Norwegian). thefamouseccles 00:53 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Linguistically, "scandinavian" refers to north germanic languages, such as swedish, danish and norwegian. Also, icelandic hasn't descended from norwegian. It has, like all north germanic languages, descended from old norse, but due to its isolation changed significantly less than the "low german"-affected north germanic languages in Scandinavia. (I am not completely sure about whether icelandic and faroese are scandinavian languages are not. I heard faroese should be more like continental scandinavian than what icelandic is.)
Oops, yes, you're right. Sorry about that. I was trying to draw attention to the fact that Finnish and Saami are not of the same family as Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish and Danish, and made a silly error myself. Thanks. thefamouceccles

So what's the phrase for "the plane"? Et plan or ett plan? I see both "et" and "ett", so we better get rid of "ett" (I think). Anyone who knows Swedish wants to confirm this? Wiwaxia 20:44, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

In Swedish, a suffix is used instead of a definite article, so "the plane" translates into "planet". "Ett plan" is also correct Swedish, but that means "a plane".
Best Regards
Torbjörn Sivebrand
ten.dnarbevis@nrojbrot backwards (no need to give the spammers an easy ride)

[edit] my comments

Hi.

I see that this work is missing quite a lot information. The articles in English are very complicated. They have multiple functions in English and seem to have many exceptions (for instance, involving body parts).

Here is one point:

Nothing is mentioned about given/old information vs. new information. This is an extremely important notion that essential in discussing the function articles in English. It is impossible not to consider this. In order to do this, you must also consider the notion of linguistic framing.

Here are some things that must be considered:

  • reference
  • generic
  • specific/non-specific
  • definiteness/indefiniteness (i.e. indentifiability)
  • given/new
    • information flow through discourse
    • frames
  • something that I am not sure what call &mdash maybe importance (??? I dont know where to look for this...)
  • categories of noun (proper, mass, countable)
  • the deletion (as in on top of the car)

We are dealing everything below:

  1. semantics
  2. pragmatics
  3. syntax

Another consideration is historical grammaticalization (i.e. semantic "bleaching"). A originally meant 'one', and I believe that the used to be a demonstrative meaning something like 'this' or 'that'. This would be interesting to note.

If the authors are serious about describing English article, why not take a look at Quirk et al's big English grammar?

Furthermore, this is just English. I have no idea about what other languages are doing with their so-called "articles"...

Peace. - Ish ishwar 18:33, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)

It seems that even native English speakers don't know rules. In school, we learned English from Oxford made textbooxs and even there was only vague explanation. I remembered few cases where "the" should be, but I'm never sure. When I read or listen english, I ignore them entirely. Nobody was able explain me where exactly are used and what is difference in meaning.88.101.76.122 10:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
OMG, they were lying to me all the time!!! That last link explains everything. It is not true that Slavic languages have no articles, they have definite articles, just don't recognize them from demonstratives and drops them in most cases, same like with personal pronouns!88.101.76.122 13:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rename to Article (grammar)

I think Article (grammar) is a better name for this page. It is about article(s) within the field of grammar, not the grammaticalness (ugh) or ungrammaticalness (ugh ugh) of an article. Demi T/C 07:32, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

Since no one has raised any objections, I've done this moved. I've fixed the ensuing double-redirects, with the exception of talk and similar pages (archives of the reference desk, etc.); I also did not fix the double-redirects to definite article, the and indefinite article, as they existed before the move. Demi T/C 21:25, 2005 Apr 14 (UTC)

[edit] "Age of the speaker"

Would someone explain what this chapter is trying to say? I'm not sure I understand it. AFAICT, it says that 1 correct (?) usage of articles is learned by native speakers at an early age 2 some people who write in English drop the articles 3 said people risk being labeled as bad speakers

Doesn't look very meaningful to me - expecially to the title, why is this called "Age of the speaker"?

LjL 14:50, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Since nobody answered, I'm going to delete that part. Just put it back in if you feel you know (and can clarify) what the heck it means... LjL 19:49, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I think what it's trying to say is that incorrect article usage is an oft-noted and sometimes derided shibboleth of non-native English speakers. I don't think this is terribly important for this article, though, which after all is about articles in general. Such information would belong in Non-native pronunciations of English or something. Demi T/C 21:09, 2005 May 23 (UTC)

[edit] French ce

Circeus removed a sentence about French ce. My impression is that in French ce and its various forms serve a function somewhat intermediate between a grammatical and a demonstrative. So many grammatical functions have been hung on le/la/les that ce has been weakened from a full demonstrative; that role goes now to ceci, celà, and similar constructions. Some note of this should be taken even if that single sentence wasn't quite enough. Smerdis of Tlön 16:30, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] dropping "the" in Northern England

Someone recently added:

In Northern England the definite article 'the' is often dropped, for example "I'm going down pub"

Is that really true? On the page Yorkshire dialect and accent it says:

* Shortening of the to a form without a vowel, often written t`, as in "I'm going down t` pub". Sometimes even the t is pronounced as a glottal stop. This process is referred to as definite article reduction. See this overview and a more detailed page on the Yorkshire Dialect website, and also Jones (2002).

That is of course well known. But dropping the "the" completely is something I find considerably less convincing. But then I'm from Southern England, so I would be grateful if someone from Northern England could please comment, and correct it if wrong. And if you would in fact say "down pub", is that phrase just a specific idiom or would you drop the "the" more generally? Thanks.

TerraGreen 22:39, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

See definite article reduction, which I've just edited this article to provide a link to. There does seem to be some evidence of complete dropping of the article, but it's very localised (to an area near Hull).--JHJ 17:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
This needs to be clarified on this page, too; the article currently says that several northern accents the article is lost altogether. As a native speaker of North Yorkshire English :-) I've never heard this, though the /t/ is often realised as a glottal stop. I think, however, that it may be lost altogether in certain fixed expressions like 'down pub' for some speakers, though I have no evidence for this. Jsteph 03:19, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Just removed this claim, it's un-sourced and (like the user above, I've never heard it commonly) thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 12:00, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I think people confuse the reduction of the article to a glottal stop with the complete omission of the article completely. Probably because in English a glottal stop is not a proper letter, and the average person would probably not know what one is. In general conversation, if someone commented on the fact that Northerners omitted "the", I would not say they were wrong as, like I said, a glottal stop does not constitute a word in English. Static Sleepstorm 20:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes,I agree with this, I often use a glottal stop to signify the definite article in the declaration "I am goin' down t' pub". Although it seem peculiar to deconstruct it that way. To someone unfamiliar with my accent it may seem like I merely left an unusual pause between "down" and "pub". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.42.228.190 (talk) 02:22, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tamil indefinite article

I think that Tamil does have an indefinite article - oru, which can also mean one in other contexts. --Grammatical error 17:42, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed "Usage" section

Okay, I was bold and removed the Usage section. Basically, Wikipedia is not a usage guide. It also seemed very unclear that this was really going to help anyone. To me: "the" can be thought of as similar to a little computer cursor is very confusing and I am a native speaker! Also this section is totally specific to English, not the grammatical article in general. To cap it off, it sounded a bit like this was copied from a textbook so there might be copywrite issues {just a suspicion}.

[edit] said

The word said is commonly used in legal documents in place of the, such as "said property" instead of "the property." The difference is that it is equivalent to "the aforementioned," while the can also be used for a unique thing not mentioned before. Is said a kind of definite article? - TAKASUGI Shinji 03:50, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not that it is used in place of "the" but simply often without it. Past participal used as an adjective; by itself in the sense of "aforementioned". Googling "the said *" shows that usage with the definite article is still very much alive, so it's probably a bit early yet to be classifying it as one itself. The omission of the article is interesting, though. Nice catch. --RJCraig 08:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I would say a kind of demonstrative determiner. It has a little bit too much semantic content to be a definite article (which means that it does not have the range of uses typical of a definite article, for example generic or first mention: "the land of said free and the home of said brave; Said Earth revolves around said Sun.") And I don't know of any language that has two distinct definite articles (that are both words)? CapnPrep 08:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
You are right. I should have written determiner, not definite article. I think said is worth being noted in determiner (class). - TAKASUGI Shinji 10:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BAND NAME

Don't you think that 'The Definite Articles' would be a great band name? eh?

[edit] why does the pus-sycat dolls redirect here?!?

the pus-sy cat cat dolls has nothing to do with grammar,why does it redirect here? and also why cant i say ########!? i have to hyphenate it to say "pus-sy cat" or it automatically has the star things(#). kozmic|sk8r 02:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Block quote

wotz blockquote? - kozmic|sk8r 23:52, 13 April 2007 (UTC) Morons

[edit] 'The' Countries

It would seem reasonable to mention the usage of 'the' in The: Gambia, Congo, Levant, Crimea, Netherlands... and historically with Lebanon and Ukraine (though this is changing now). The first, btw, were originally the names of rivers - which always take 'the' (the Thames). (The) 'Ukraine' is weird in most languages (in Russian and Polish one says 'na Ukrainie' when 'w' usually means 'in') because etymologically the name means 'on the edge' ('kraj' is slavonic for edge, 'u' means 'at'). PC speakers of Russian in the Ukraine now say 'w Ukrainie' - to make the Ukraine like other countries - so maybe this is being reflected in English by dropping the 'the'? I don't know for sure though. Should we cover this country issue in the article?Malick78 07:07, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Ukraine is a special case, because of the parallel pronoun issue. Ukraine is one of the few countries to ask that the definite not be used.
It is a good topic, and I have been meaning to write it up sometime. Many countries used to carry the definite article, now the Gambia is the only one where it's even close to universal. Now that Tony Blair has retired, we may never hear "the Lebanon" again. I say "Netherlands", but in the US I'm in the minority. I'll go slap something together.  Randall Bart   Talk  19:04, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

In some other languages: la France, die Schweiz, al-`Iraq, ha-Galil.

Also, topic at Languagehat. --JWB 20:05, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The mention of "the" mentioned in other languages should definetly be added to the article of "the" article (hahaha). Also, countries that are plural in name usually have "the" in English - The Netherlands, The Phillipines, The United Arab Emirates, and here in the English-speaking world, The United States of America. Ironically, the CIA uses the for Bahamas and Gambia, and apparently not for their own country :) 71.212.5.9 (talk) 04:32, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- Ohh, forgot - Countries with a type of government structure in the name are commonly refered as "the" as well. See USA and UAE above, and also The United Kingdom, The Czech Republic, The Democratic Republic of Congo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.212.5.9 (talk) 04:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] JUNK!

Could someone please remove the junk on the first section!

By the way- whoever did it.. IT's NOT FUNNY —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.187.221.223 (talk) 01:23, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. I hope that person dosen't do it again.

[edit] Only map of Europe?

Aw common, I wanted to know how it is in the United States and Japan. The European map is not useful for someone outside Europe. TheBlazikenMaster (talk) 13:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Caption question

The map has this in the caption:

  • indefinite and definite articles
  • only definite articles
  • indefinite and postfixed definite articles
  • only postfixed definite articles
  • no articles

I understand the first, second, and last comments; the third and fourth are never discussed in this article. I think they should be. Squad51 (talk) 20:06, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I second this. It is in fact the reason I came to the talk page. To suggest that the article explains what postfixed definite articles are. Mehmet Karatay (talk) 21:40, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


this article sould also have a place for the defintion of the word partitive article!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.144.73.66 (talk) 22:02, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Map problem

There is some color in Finland. Articles are not found in any of the Finnish dialects, particularly not Satakunta dialect as the map would suggest. --Vuo (talk) 01:25, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that marking on the map represents areas where Swedish is common.  Randall Bart   Talk  07:58, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Further map problem

Slovenian language does not have articles. The map shows Slovenia hatched with blue color, which is wrong. The only Slavic languages that have articles are Macedonian and Bulgarian, and the map is correct in those parts. NikNovi (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I am less certain about this one. My guess is that the hatching indicates that German is widely spoken in Slovenia. Is it? Or maybe Italian?  Randall Bart   Talk  08:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Here are the 2002 census (popis) results: Popis 2002 NikNovi (talk) 17:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
It shows 41,000 unknown, but I don't see a significant number in any language with article. I will alert the creator of the map.  Randall Bart   Talk  07:58, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks NikNovi (talk) 14:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "go to hospital"

The article mentions "go to hospital". Is this used? I am a native English speaker in the north east of the U.S., and I have never heard this used. I would never say it. If I was injured I would say "I am going to the hospital" or I would tell someone who is sick "go to the hospital!". Can someone confirm if "go to hospital" is used in England or possibly some other region of the U.S.? Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joels341 (talk • contribs) 06:31, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I just put a {{original research}} on it because it is unreferenced and seems queer to me. --Thinboy00's sockpuppet alternate account 03:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
In England they say "go to hospital" or "in hospital", similar to "go to school", "at work", etc. In the USA, "hospital" needs a determiner. Someone removed it from the page already, but whoever put it there originally should restore it. It's certainly not deserving {{original research}}, unless we intend to heavily cite this page. Here's a usage on Quinion's site. He's not discussing it, but he doesn't object to it either. It's common usage at the BBC: "airlifted to hospital", "What to take to hospital", "going into hospital".  Randall Bart   Talk  00:30, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect needed

Entering "Definite Article" in the search box leads to this page, with no redirect link for the Eddie Izzard comedy DVD of the same name. The page for the DVD exists, but there needs to be a redirect of some kind for people seeking it rather than the grammar article. Rachel Summers (talk) 20:59, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I just entered "Definite Article" and was taken to the DVD's article. However, entering "Definite article" redirects here. I've added a hatnote to this article regarding the redirect. Tuvok[T@lk/Improve] 21:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Where's the map?

I thought the map was nice because having articles is an areal feature, and I copied it to the Japanese version. Now the map has been removed. Is there any problem other than the abovementioned errors? - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 06:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Euphonics rule

In my dialect of english, (South-eastern manitoban, Canada) "the" obeys a euphonics rule where /the/ is close to [ðɐ] in front of consonants but close to [ði] in front of vowels, the two sound quite different, and I was wondering if this is a universal phenomenon or just a few dialects, I here it pretty often, and it isn't mentioned in the article, so I think that it probably should be, if the rule applies everywhere. Elsewise I think it's at least worth mentioning that it obeys euphonics in some regions. So in summary, /the/ = [ðɐ]and[ði], worth including? ace ma'noyanort lu ave matthew (talk) 19:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Why is there a whole section on Hawaii below References - does this have anything to do with grammar?? Penny Scown (talk) 03:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History section

Just a comment: It would be interesting to have a brief history section. The development of articles in various languages is related, both in terms of borrowing words as well as borrowing the idea. Basically I'm suggesting a brief discussion of where the concept originated and how different cultures picked it up. Unfortunately I don't know enough of the history to write about it intelligently. --Mcorazao (talk) 17:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


(((((this article has some wrong problems and need to be fix!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)))) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.144.73.66 (talk) 22:01, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reversion to January 12

This article has been a vandal magnet. In many cases, vandalism has been deleted without restoring text the vandal removed. The article as it existed today was only half as long as the version of four months ago. After a few hours reviewing the several versions of this article, I have chosen January 12 as the version to revert to.

If you have made good faith edits since January 12, I am sorry but those edits are gone. Please do not attempt to revert to a prior version, but make your edits anew against the current version.

In reverting the page, I have restored the map. I know there are concerns with the map. Please state those issues on this page, and I will attempt to revise the map to reflect those concerns. I am not an expert in Eastern European languages, so please provided cites for all corrections you want made. Such cites can include other articles on Wikipedia.  Randall Bart   Talk  07:55, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sound

As a non-native speaker, I'd like to know something about the sound of "the". I learned that if "the" is put before a vowel, you pronounce it "thee" (like "the universe"). Nevertheless in some songs I listened to, "thee" is sometimes used before a word that doesen't start with a vowel (in a jamaican song I heard "thee telephone rings"). I guess it depends from dialects, but I'd like to know something about from a native speaker. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.184.32.61 (talk) 12:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

that's right, they're basically interchangable. we alternate for emphasis from /ðə/ (the) to /ði/ (thee), where thee usually, defaults, to be more formal/honoring of the noun:
  • It's not just (/ðə/ the) local chicken shack, it's (/ði/ thee) local chicken shack.

But that role can reverse depending on the previous the's and thee's:

  • It was (/ðə/ the) best of times, it was (/ðə/ the) worst of times; it was (/ði/ thee) age of wisdom, it was (/ðə/ the) age of foolishness; it was (/ðə/ the) epoch of belief, it was (/ðə/ the) epoch of incredulity; it was (/ðə/ the) season of Light, it was (/ðə/ the) season of Darkness; it was (/ðə/ the) spring of hope, it was (/ðə/ the) winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going (/ði/ thee) other way.
The imporant part in that example is the last use. It is definitely "thee". People will read the others one way or another, and think they hear it differently too, because our tongues and minds get tired and the e and i start to blur. But we tend to deemphasize all the previous the's compared to the last one.

— robbiemuffin page talk 17:52, 8 June 2008 (UTC)