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NL-KR Digest Volume 03 No. 34
NL-KR Digest (10/15/87 20:30:33) Volume 3 Number 34
Today's Topics:
The definite article
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 87 04:16 EDT
From: Claus Tondering <ct@dde.uucp>
Subject: The definite article
The definite article (in English the word "the") fascinates me.
Consider the following facts:
1) All modern Latin languages that I know of (French, Italian, Spanish) have
a definite article, but Latin itself had none.
2) All Germanic languages that I know of (English, German, Dutch, Danish,
Norwegian, Swedish) have a definite article. But in English, German,
and Dutch the definite article is a true word ("the", "der/die/das",
"de/het"), but in the Scandinavian languages the definite article
is replaced by a morphological change to the noun. For example:
English: Danish:
-------- -------
house hus
the house huset
houses huse
the houses husene
3) Most Slavonic languages have no definite article (e.g. Russian and
Czech), but Bulgarian does, and in Bulgarian the definite form of
a word is also constructed by a morphological change to the word.
(I think they add some kind of suffix to express the idea.)
4) Hebrew and (I think) Arabic have a definite article.
It seems to me that the definite article (or at least a definite form of
nouns) pops up in the most peculiar way in the most peculiar places:
Closely related languages such as Italian and Latin differ in that
Italian has a definite article, whereas Latin doesn't - but unrelated
languages such as English and Hebrew both have a definite article.
Closely related languages such as German and Danish differ in the method
they use for constructing the definite form of the noun - but Bulgarian
and Danish, which are only remotely related, use the same mechanism for
constructing the definite form of the noun.
I feel tempted to draw the following conclusion: In the Indo-European
languages the definite article is a fairly new thing that seems to have
evolved independently in many different languages. People need a definite
article. The definite article is so important to language that it almost
inevitably will evolve. For example, it appears that the lack of the
article in Latin has been so severe a shortcoming that the article
inevitably did spring into life in the modern Latin languages.
Three questions:
1) Does what I am saying make sense?
2) Does anybody know about other peculiarities about the definite
article?
3) Do any languages beside the Indo-European and Semitic ones have a
definite article?
--
Claus Tondering
Dansk Data Elektronik A/S, Herlev, Denmark
E-mail: ct@dde.uucp or ...!uunet!mcvax!diku!dde!ct
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 00:08 EDT
From: Larry Lippman <larry@kitty.UUCP>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <175@Aragorn.dde.uucp>, ct@dde.uucp (Claus Tondering) writes:
> The definite article (in English the word "the") fascinates me.
> Consider the following facts: ...
Something I recently read in a periodical caused me to give some
thought to the requirement for definite and indefinite articles. It caused
me to pose my own question: Is there any real need for the definite and
indefinite article in English?
After some reflection, I came to a tentative answer: NO. Now, I
don't consider myself expert in linguistics (I speak/read German and read
Latin - that's it), so perhaps I have reached a hasty conclusion.
On the other hand, in the past week I have found myself performing
a little experiment: I have taken given passages of text and have omitted
the definite and indefinite articles, and have found no apparent loss in
meaning (to me at least). As an example, take the last paragrph that I
quoted above and remove all the articles; does it lose any meaning?
Now, here is an even more startling question: Might the English
language be more "efficient" (i.e., fewer words, get to the point quicker)
if the definite and indefinite articles were eliminated?
Any comments? Have I missed something?
<> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York
<> UUCP: {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rutgers|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry
<> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/
<> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?"
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 09:24 EDT
From: mark edwards <edwards@uwmacc.UUCP>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <2063@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes:
: Any comments? Have I missed something?
Take a look at the following sentences:
1. A man was walking down the street. The man bought a newspaper.
2. A man was walking down the street. A man bought a newspaper.
In sentence 1. the two occurences of man are related. In 2. they are
not.
Thus the articles carry meaning and not just trivial meaning either.
mark
--
edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!edwards
UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 09:29 EDT
From: jc <jc@minya.UUCP>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <175@Aragorn.dde.uucp>, ct@dde.uucp (Claus Tondering) writes:
>
> 1) All modern Latin languages that I know of (French, Italian, Spanish) have
> a definite article, but Latin itself had none.
>
[Examples illustrating the definite as an adjective and as a suffix]
There is a third method, which I can illustrate from Serbo-Croatian. Here,
definiteness is indicated by the length of the ending of adjectives attached
to a noun. For examples, I will have to violate the usual spelling, because
ASCII can't handle it (and it is usually not indicated in writing anyway, to
confuse non-native speakers:-). I'll indicate length by doubling the vowel
Consider:
mlaada zhena 'a young woman'
mlaadaa zhena 'the young woman'
stari graad 'an old town'
staarii graad 'the old (part of) town'
viisoko brdo 'a high hill'
viisokoo brdo 'the high hill'
There are some problems with this, such as that there is no way to indicate
definiteness unless you use an adjective. And, as usual, there is the usual
set of definitizing adjectives (my, that, which?, etc.) that don't need to
be marked as such because it is implicit in their meaning. Also, some common
short adjectives (like 'star-') have a long root in the definite form. What
human languages are regular?
This feature goes back to prehistory in the Slavic languages, but has been
lost in most of them in the last millenium or so. It's interesting that
Bulgarian has developed a different (suffix) definitizer in recent centuries.
As for classical languages, well, Anglo-Saxon lacked one; the English article
has developed in the last millenium. Like most of the examples around of the
adjective or suffix form, it derives from an adjective that meant "that one".
> Three questions:
> 1) Does what I am saying make sense?
Yup. It's standard fare in intro linguistic courses.
> 2) Does anybody know about other peculiarities about the definite
> article?
Lots. It is almost always irregular wherever it occurs; the rules for its
use differ widely (as different dialects of English disagree when to use it).
But most interestingly, it seems to come and go as a sort of linguistic fad
in many languages. Currently, for instance, Russians do quite well without
any definite article. Old Slavonic used the method I described above. In
another thousand years, they may re-invent it.
> 3) Do any languages beside the Indo-European and Semitic ones have a
> definite article?
Lots and lots of them.
Anyone got any more constructs for definitizing things?
--
John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 13:46 EDT
From: Adam J. Kucznetsov <adam@cunixc.columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <175@Aragorn.dde.uucp> ct@dde.uucp (Claus Tondering) writes:
>The definite article (in English the word "the") fascinates me.
>Consider the following facts:
>
>1) All modern Latin languages that I know of (French, Italian, Spanish) have
> a definite article, but Latin itself had none.
>
>2) All Germanic languages that I know of (English, German, Dutch, Danish,
> Norwegian, Swedish) have a definite article. ...
>Closely related languages such as Italian and Latin differ in that
>Italian has a definite article, whereas Latin doesn't - but unrelated
>languages such as English and Hebrew both have a definite article. ...
>... The definite article is so important to language that it almost
>inevitably will evolve. For example, it appears that the lack of the
>article in Latin has been so severe a shortcoming that the article
>inevitably did spring into life in the modern Latin languages.
In Italic, Germanic, and Hellenic languages at least, the definite
article is derived from the demonstratives, from earlier vernaculars,
that have lost most of their original force.
For example all the definite articles (and 3p. pronouns, for that
matter, as well) are modifications of the Latin demonstrative "ille, -a,
-ud," "that (one)." You can easily see how this would have spawned all
the le's, la's, el's, il's, i's and so on by phonetic erosion. The
meaning eroded at the same time. Latin, as you correctly state, had no
definite (or indefinite) article -- >in the 'literary' language,<
somewhat contrived as that was, that we are familiar with through Cicero
et al. The "vulgar" or popular speech of various areas, which developed
smoothly into the so-called Romance languages, used such constructions
as "ille" and "unus" to a varying degree, depending on the time period,
area, etc., to avoid ambiguities in common speech. Eventually, this was
universally adopted, in somewhat different forms. Note that forms of
"ille" were adopted instead of the weaker "is, ea, id" forms (also
demonstratives) to provide the eventual non-demonstrative 3p. personal
pronouns as well.
By the way, Romanian is an example of an Italic language that contains
many forms ("canele" <-- "cane ille") consisting of fused postposited
"ille," sort of like the Scandinavian languages you mentioned. There was
an earlier Eastern tendency to put "ille" after the noun instead of
before it, which latter was the norm in the other V. Latin dialects.
The study of the Romance definite article is interesting in its own
right. The languages differ significantly in its use, among themselves
and from other IE languages. For example, in French the noun and
definite article are almost inseparable. This applies to plenty of
things where English speakers would not use an article: abstract nouns,
generalizations, and so on: "l'homme" but "man." This is relatively new.
Germanic language demonstratives aside from the Scandinavian fused ones
(but including the Scandinavian forms in modified nouns) also stem from
the demonstrative. This is harder to see in modEnglish than in German, so
I'll use to the latter language and point out that "der, die, das" are
still used, not only as simple definite articles, but also as (stressed)
demonstratives with the approximate force of "that, those" -- where more
force is required "(-)jen-" forms are sometimes used. They are, in short,
demonstrative articles and pronouns and also the normal relatives:
Das MAEDchen ist schoen. -- the girl is pretty.
DAS Maedchen ist schoen. -- THAT girl is pretty.
DAS ist schoen -- THAT is pretty!
DIE ist schoen -- SHE is pretty!
Das Maedchen, das -- the girl that
the girl who
the girl, who
though "was" (cp. dial. English "what," as in "the car what I bought..")
and "welch-" (cp. "which") have their relative use too; in standard
German the first is restricted to a few grammatically distinguished
cases, but "welch-" is not generally different from "der, die, das"
though it is used less often, mostly to avoid ambiguities related to --
you guessed it -- the latter's use as demonstratives. The English
distinction of restrictiveness between "that" and "which," which is also
rather new and artificial, is not present:
Die Katze, die... the cat that
the cat, which
Die Katze, welch(e)... the cat that
the cat, which
There are minor form variations between the demonstratives and the
relatives. I know all this is a bit far off the track, so I'll quit
here....
lemme just add that even the ancient (Attic, 'tis all I know) Greek
definite article stemmed from a demonstrative -- all this way before the
process we've been talking about with Latin. The classical Latin
writers, who all knew Greek (of course :-), knew about the Greek
definite article, though I don't think they thought about its being a
weakened demonstrative. This is significant, though, since it shows
that (even in those benighted times?!) the >use< of a definite article
for specification was not totally foreign to even the educated Romans.
And honestly, I don't think that Caesar talked to his army in the same
way as he wrote. So... who knows.
adam(cat)
--
Cat (Adam) J. Kucznetsov adam@cunixc.columbia.edu and cunixc.UUCP
Columbia University, NYC UI.ADAM@CU20B.BITNET AJUUS@CUVMA.BITNET
When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 23:04 EDT
From: Larry Lippman <larry@kitty.UUCP>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <1857@uwmacc.UUCP>, edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) writes:
> : Something I recently read in a periodical caused me to give some
> :thought to the requirement for definite and indefinite articles. It caused
> :me to pose my own question: Is there any real need for the definite and
> :indefinite article in English?
> : After some reflection, I came to a tentative answer: NO. ...
>
> Take a look at the following sentences:
>
> 1. A man was walking down the street. The man bought a newspaper.
>
> 2. A man was walking down the street. A man bought a newspaper.
>
> In sentence 1. the two occurences of man are related. In 2. they are
> not.
>
> Thus the articles carry meaning and not just trivial meaning either.
However, if no articles were used, the sentences could be expressed,
respectively:
1. Man was walking down street and bought newspaper.
Man who was walking down street bought newspaper.
etc.
2. Man was walking down street. Man bought newspaper.
Man was walking down street. Other man bought newspaper.
Man was walking down street. Second man bought newspaper.
etc.
The first sentence in my (2.) example has some ambiguity; however,
common usage of a language without articles could imply a default condition
(i.e., consecutive use of non-specific noun could "default" to meaning either
the same "one" or a "different one"). My guess is default should be
"different one".
My point is: if there were no articles, sentence construction would
be "adjusted" to alleviate any ambiguities.
<> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York
<> UUCP: {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rutgers|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry
<> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/
<> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?"
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 87 08:48 EDT
From: Amos Shapir <amos@taux01.UUCP>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <175@Aragorn.dde.uucp> ct@dde.uucp (Claus Tondering) writes:
>4) Hebrew and (I think) Arabic have a definite article.
In Hebrew it's a suffix (ha-). In arabic it's a separate word (al or el).
Neither has an indefinite article.
>I feel tempted to draw the following conclusion: In the Indo-European
>languages the definite article is a fairly new thing that seems to have
>evolved independently in many different languages.
Very intriguing, in view of the fact that Spanish uses the arabic form 'el'
(for masculine singular, at least).
--
Amos Shapir (My other cpu is a NS32532)
National Semiconductor (Israel)
6 Maskit st. P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel Tel. +972 52 522261
amos%taux01@nsc.com (used to be amos%nsta@nsc.com) 34 48 E / 32 10 N
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 87 02:45 EDT
From: Robert Rubinoff <rubinoff@linc.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <355@taux01.UUCP> amos%taux01@nsc.com (Amos Shapir) writes:
>In article <175@Aragorn.dde.uucp> ct@dde.uucp (Claus Tondering) writes:
>>4) Hebrew and (I think) Arabic have a definite article.
>
>In Hebrew it's a suffix (ha-). In arabic it's a separate word (al or el).
>Neither has an indefinite article.
No, it's a prefix in Hebrew
>Very intriguing, in view of the fact that Spanish uses the arabic form 'el'
>(for masculine singular, at least).
No, Spanish "el" is from the Latin "ille", like most Romance articles and
third person pronouns.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 87 02:59 EDT
From: Robert Rubinoff <rubinoff@linc.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <2067@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes:
>In article <1857@uwmacc.UUCP>, edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) writes:
>> :me to pose my own question: Is there any real need for the definite and
>> :indefinite article in English?
>> : After some reflection, I came to a tentative answer: NO. ...
>> Take a look at the following sentences:
>> 1. A man was walking down the street. The man bought a newspaper.
>> 2. A man was walking down the street. A man bought a newspaper.
> However, if no articles were used, the sentences could be expressed,
>respectively:
>
>1. Man was walking down street and bought newspaper.
> Man who was walking down street bought newspaper.
> etc.
>
>2. Man was walking down street. Man bought newspaper.
> Man was walking down street. Other man bought newspaper.
> Man was walking down street. Second man bought newspaper.
> etc.
It seems a little odd to me to try to argue that we don't need articles by
showing that we can replace them by using longer words!
This whole discussion is a little misdirected. The question of whether
a particular language has both definite and indefinite articles, only one of
them, or neither, is an interesting issue in the syntax/lexicon of the
particular language. But the real point is that every language has to have
some way of distinguishuing between definite and indefinite noun phrases.
In many languages it is done by using articles. In other languages, other
ways are used. But some method is needed to distinguish between concepts
that the hearer is expected to be able to pick out and concepts that the
hearer can't pick out either because (s)he doesn't know them or because
the description provided by the speaker isn't sufficient. (That, incidentally,
is roughly the difference between definite and indefinite NPs)
Robert
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 87 17:54 EDT
From: wales@CS.UCLA.EDU
Subject: Re: The definite article
In article <175@Aragorn.dde.uucp> ct@dde.uucp (Claus Tondering) writes:
>3) Do any languages beside the Indo-European and Semitic ones have a
> definite article?
Well, Hungarian does (though Finnish does not).
The Hungarian definite article ("az", or "a" before a word starting with
a consonant) is, I presume, derived from the demonstrative "az" (=that).
Also, I believe Basque has a "definite article" suffix.
Not all modern Indo-European languages have a definite article, of
course. Besides the Baltic and Slavic languages (except Bulgarian),
Farsi (Persian) lacks the article.
-- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 213-825-5683
3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA
wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(ucbvax,rutgers)!ucla-cs!wales
"Sir, there is a multilegged creature crawling on your shoulder."
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 87 09:48 EDT
From: Tony Landells <jal@oliveb.UUCP>
Subject: Re: The definite article
In response to an article (175@Aragorn.dde.uucp) by Claus Tondering
(ct@dde.uucp), Larry Lippman (larry@kitty.UUCP), in his article
(2063@kitty.UUCP), put forward the idea that articles were fairly
unnecessary and that we may be better off (for example, we'd get to the
point quicker) without them.
To put in my humble opinion, it appears to me that a language needs at
least one or the other (i.e. definite or indefinite) article in order
to avoid a lot of ambiguity - the other can be assumed as the default.
Or, at least, in English we could probably get away with this. In some
other languages, however, there is a lot of other information that would
be lost. The language I have in mind, in particular, is Modern Greek.
Modern Greek is an inflected language (that is, nouns and adjectives
alter to indicate their role in the sentence). The problem is, that
there are many patterns for these alterations, and many of these indic-
ators are reused. Since the article also alters, a lot of the time
you need the information provided by the article and the noun to tell
you which role the noun is playing - just the one or the other is not
enough.
Now it is possible that you could get away without articles in such a
language (Russian does it quite well, but it doesn't reuse the endings,
if at all (it's a LONG time since I studied Russian), anywhere near as
much as Greek does), but it could result in a lot of confusion.
To get back to the main point, and to summarise: if the only information
you're extracting from the article is definite or indefinite use of the
noun, then I believe that one or the other (but not necessarily both) is
extremely useful, while if you are extracting other information from it
as well, then you could be losing quite a lot more than just convenience
by throwing them away.
Tony Landells.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 87 21:51 EDT
From: Mark Brader <msb@sq.uucp>
Subject: Re: The definite article
Adam J. Kucznetsov (adam@cunixc.columbia.edu) shows that
> In Italic, Germanic, and Hellenic languages at least, the definite
> article is derived from the demonstratives, from earlier vernaculars,
> that have lost most of their original force.
I observe some evidence that this process is still going on in English,
even though we have a definite article already. In some milieus, one
hears "that" used more or less as an article.
For instance, when I used to travel regularly by train between Kitchener
and Toronto, I would often overhear railway people referring to train 665
as "that #665", with no special implication. Similarly, it's common for
sports fans to say [usually to non-fans like me :-)], "How about those
Blue Jays?" [Well, it WAS common until this week, anyway... :-)]
This suggests that we may eventually lose the distinction between "that"
and "the" (wild conjecture: the forms will eventually exist side by side
varying according to the initial sound of the following word!), and have to
evolve a new word for "that".
Mark Brader "It's okay to have our own language if we feel
utzoo!sq!msb we need it, but why does it have to be used
msb@sq.com as a nose to look down?" -- Becky Slocombe
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 87 09:21 EDT
From: T. Moody <tmoody@sjuvax.UUCP>
Subject: Re: The definite article
Esperanto has a definite article (LA, invariant) but no indefinite
article. Like virtually every other feature of Esperanto, this
decision on the part of its author provoked a fair amount of contro-
versy. The speakers of article-less languages complained that
articles are superfluous, unnecessary complications. Others complained
that the absence of an indefinite article was unacceptable.
As it turns out, in modern spoken and written Esperanto there is
considerable variation in how people use the definite article, but it
doesn't seem to get in the way.
Incidentally, I remember reading in an article by Derek Bickerton that
all creole languages have both definite and indefinite articles.
--
Todd Moody * {allegra|astrovax|bpa|burdvax}!sjuvax!tmoody * SJU Phil. Dept.
"The wind is not moving. The flag is not moving. Mind is moving."
------------------------------
[Moderator's note: More on this topic will follow in a future iss. - BWM]
End of NL-KR Digest
*******************
