Talk:Article (grammar)

"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)

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"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

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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.)

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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)

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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)

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)

"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)