Article (grammar)

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 was broken)
an indefinite article (English a, an) indicates that the noun refers to something of the kind, but the particular instance is not important (A chair was broken).
a zero article is implied as the definite article but is not pronounced.
a partitive article indicates an indefinite quantity of a mass noun; there is no partitive article in English, though the words some or any often have that function. An example is French du / de la, as in Voulez-vous du café ? ("Do you want some coffee?")

Some languages such as Swahili rarely use articles, indicating such distinctions in other ways or not at all. Some other languages, including Latin, Japanese, Russian and Thai do not have them at all (in those languages, if necessary, you can use "one" and "that" in contexts where other languages would use an indefinite and definite article).

Other languages, including Welsh and the constructed languages Esperanto or Ido, have definite articles, but no indefinite articles. For example, in Esperanto and Ido, the house is la domo, while a house is domo.

In the etymologies of many languages, definite articles formerly were demonstrative pronouns or adjectives; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative ille in the Romance languages, becoming French le, Spanish el, and Italian il, while indefinite articles originate or are same as the numeral for one.

Many European languages that have grammatical gender usually have their article agree with the gender of the noun (French le 'the' masculine, la feminine). Articles in several languages also change according to the number of the noun. In French, since the plural forms marked on nouns often no longer affect pronunciation, the article marks the number of the noun.

When homonyms have a different gender in these languages, the articles can differentiate them, as in Spanish, where la cólera (feminine) is "anger" and el cólera (masculine) is "cholera", or German, where die Steuer (feminine) is "the tax" and das Steuer (neuter) is "the steering-wheel", or Swedish, where en plan (common) is "a plan" and ett plan (neuter) 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").

French uses words such as ce to specify increasing definiteness. Both Ancient and Modern Greek use the definite article with proper names: ὁ Ἰησοῦς ho Iēsoûs ("the Jesus"), and, optionally, before both a noun and each of its adjectives: ὁ πατὴρ ὁ ἀγαθός ho patēr ho agathós (literally, "the father the good"; naturally, "the good father"). Similarly, in German colloquial speech you may say "Ich habe mit der Claudia gesprochen" (literally, "I have with the Claudia spoken"); also, in colloquial northern Italian, phrases like "Ho parlato col Marco" ("I have spoken with the Marco) are common, and Catalan grammar prescribes constructions such as He parlat amb la Gemma (lit. "I have spoken with the Gemma").

By the same token, the words used as English articles have other grammatical functions. See A, an.

In Scandinavian languages, the definite article can be a suffix. In Swedish, planen is "the plan", and planet is "the plane", and a double definite article is possible, in which a free-standing article (det, den, de) and the definite article suffix are used together (det vita planet "the white plane"). Curiously, planen is also the plural definite form for the neuter "the planes". Several languages on the Balkans also use suffixes for articles. This is regarded as an effect of the Balkan linguistic union. For example, in Romanian, consulul is 'the consul'. Macedonian and Bulgarian share the pattern; for example, drvo means "tree", while drvoto means "the tree" (durvo and durvoto in Bulgarian).

The, the English grammatical article

The word the functions primarily as the definite grammatical article in English.

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. These words functioned both as demonstrative pronouns and as grammatical articles. In Middle English these had all fallen together into þe, the ancestor of the Modern English word.

Because the word the is common in movie and book titles, they are placed invertedly, such as Grudge, The, for convenience when looking for a title.

In some northern British dialects of English, "the" is pronounced as [t], usually written in dialect dialogue as t'. In some of those dialects, "the" weakened until it disappeared, for example "Vet left some stuff to treat cow, and charged more than cow is worth.".

Usage

The following discussion is meant to give pointers in the uses of the grammatical articles the and a for non-native speakers.

When using English, 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 following the word the 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 implies 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.