Learn English: Grammatical Articles
Grammatical articles tend to cause a lot of trouble for beginning students of foreign language; I will give a brief explanation of their purpose in the English language. Grammatical articles in English are broken up into four types: definite, indefinite, partitive, and zero. They are described below.
Definite Articles
I will start by explaining that the word the is a definite article; it is definite because it refers to a specific object. Example:
The car is red.
In that sentence, the definite article ‘the’ tells us that a specific car is red, not an unspecified or otherwise random car. This is important to note because definite articles serve the same purpose in the Romance languages. However, unlike the Romance languages, English nouns are genderless; in French, for example, a noun will either be masculine or feminine and thus tied to a specific definite article. In English, we only have one definite article and it is ‘the’.
Indefinite Articles
I will start by explaining that indefinite articles in English are ‘a’ or ‘an’; these are called indefinite because they do not refer to a specific object. Example:
A car is red.
An elephant is gray.
The emphasized words above are indefinite articles; they do not refer to a specific car or elephant. Instead, they refer to seemingly random objects or are generalizations about the objects. You might interpret ‘An elephant is gray,’ to mean that generally, elephants are gray. In foreign language, an indefinite article is sometimes modified by the gender of the noun it is referring to. I will go into specifics for each language in separate articles.
Partitive Articles
In English, we do not have a specific word for partitive articles. Partitive articles are used to describe only a part of something or to describe something that is not broken into parts. Example:
Would you like some water?
Do you have any money?
Both of these provide the same functionality as a partitive article; they do not reference specific amounts of specific water or money. In many foreign languages there are specific words for partitive articles and there are specific rules that govern them.
Zero Articles
A zero article is actually the lack of an article. It is used for broad generalizations or comparisons. Example:
Dogs are my favorite animals.
Cats are cleaner than Dogs.
As you can see, there is no article present in either of those sentences, so we take them as general statements instead of referencing specific objects.
As always, comments are welcome; this topic may seem simple but I do not want anyone to be left in the dark, so please write if you are having trouble.
Tags: Learn English
October 7th, 2008 at 9:01 am
[...] are not unique to English and they tend to work similarly in the romance languages. For example, English articles such as the and an work almost identically in French and Spanish, and being able to coherently [...]