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"Definite article" redirects here. For the Eddie Izzard comedy DVD, see Definite Article.
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. The three main articles in the English language are the, an and a. An article is sometimes called a noun marker, although this is generally considered to be an archaic term.Articles, Determiners and Quantifiers
It is sometimes wondered which part of speech articles belong to. Despite much speculation, articles are not adjectives because they don\'t describe nouns; they just agree with them. Linguists place them in a different category, that of determiners.
Articles can have various functions:The Use and Non-Use of Articles
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In English, a definite article is mostly used to refer to an object or person who has been previously introduced. For example:
In this example, a bear becomes the bear because a "mammoth bear" had been previously introduced into the narrative, and no other bear was involved in the story. Only previously introduced subjects like "the bear" or unique subjects, where the speaker can assume that the audience is aware of the identity of the referent (The heart has its reasons. . . ) typically take definite articles in English.
By contrast, the indefinite article is used in situations where a new subject is being introduced, and the speaker assumes that the hearer is not yet familiar with the subject:
Reflecting its historical derivation from the number word one, the English indefinite article can only be used with singular count nouns. For mass nouns, or for plurals, adjectives or adjective phrases like some or a few substitute for it. In English, pronouns, nouns already having another non-number determiner, and proper nouns usually do not use articles. Otherwise in English, unlike many other languages, singular count nouns take an article; either a, an, or the.Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar (Oxford University Press, 1996) ISBN 0-19-861250-8 Also in English word order, articles precede any adjectives which modify the applicable noun.
In French, the masculine definite article le (meaning the) is contracted with a following word if that word begins with a vowel sound. When the French words de and le are to be used sequentially (meaning of the), the word du is used instead, in addition to the above mentioned use of du as a partitive article.
In various languages other than English, masculine and feminine forms of articles differ. Singular and plural forms of articles can also differ in other languages. Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old vs. new information, such as topic-comment constructions.
The word the is the only definite article of the English language. The is the most common word in the English language.World English. The 500 Most Commonly Used Words in the English Language. Retrieved on 2007-01-14.
The article the is used in English as the very first part of a noun phrase. For example:
Here "the end of time" is a noun phrase. The use of the signals that the reference is to a specific and unique instance of the concept (such as person, object, or idea) expressed in the noun phrase. Here, the implication is that there is one end of time, and that it has arrived.
There are many times, but the meaning here is the time now, of which (at the moment the sentence was produced) there is only one.
Linguists believe that the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages (i.e., the Proto-Indo-European language) did not have a definite article. Most of the languages in this family do not have definite or indefinite articles; there is no article in Latin, Sanskrit, Persian or in some modern Indo-European languages, especially in Slavic languages - Polish, Russian, Slovak and Czech, etc (the only Slavic languages that have articles are Bulgarian and Macedonian) and in the Baltic languages - Latvian, Lithuanian and Latgalian. Errors with the use of the and other determiners are common in people learning English (e.g., native Czech-speaker Ivana Trump, first wife of Donald Trump, referring to him as "the Donald"). Classical Greek has a definite article (which happens to be very similar to the definite article in German, but with t instead of German d), but Homeric Greek did not. In the etymologies of these and many other languages, the definite article arose by a demonstrative pronoun or adjective changing its usage; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative "ille" (meaning "that") in the Romance languages, becoming French le, la, l’, and les, Spanish el, la, lo, los, and las, Italian il, la, lo, l’, i, gli, and le, and Portuguese o, os, a, and as.
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). In Middle English these had all merged into þe, the ancestor of the Modern English word the.
In Middle English the (þe) was frequently abbreviated as a þ with a small e above it, similar to the abbreviation for that, which was a þ with a small t above it. During the latter Middle English and Early Modern English periods, the letter Thorn (þ) in its common script, or cursive, form came to resemble a y shape. As such the use of a y with an e above it as an abbreviation became common. This can still be seen in reprints of the 1611 edition of the King James Version of the Bible in places such as Romans 15:29, or in the Mayflower Compact. Note that the article was never pronounced with a y sound, even when so written.
The article is not used in prepositional phrases that refer to travelling to certain places to participate in an activity related to the place. You may, for example, "go to school". Here, we assume this refers a teacher or pupil who will be giving or attending classes. A parent visiting a teacher or collecting a child would go "to the school" as he or she will not be engaged in the normal activity of schooling. Furthermore, while the child would presumably receive equivalent education at most other schools, the parent must go to the particular school in which his child is enrolled: the child can only be collected from the school that he attends. Similarly, you will need to "go to hospital" after sustaining an injury, while anyone subsequently visiting you would be going "to the hospital", as they must go to the particular hospital where you are. In American English (as opposed to the latter usage of British English), the article is never omitted as either case would be referred to as going to "a hospital" or "the hospital." However, one would not talk about "going to cinema" even if your purpose is to participate in the typical activity related to the place (that is, to watch a film).
In news headlines and informal writing, such as notes or diaries, the definite article and some other particles are often omitted, for example, "Must pick up prescription at pharmacy today."
In some Northern England dialects of English, the is pronounced as [tə] (with a dental t) or as a glottal stop, usually written in eye dialect as
In dialects that do not have /ð/ (voiced dental fricative), the is pronounced with a voiced dental plosive, as in /d̪ə/ or /d̪iː/).
In English most countries never take the definite article, but there are many that do. It is commonly used with many country names which derive from names of island groups (the Philippines), rivers (The Gambia), mountain ranges (the Lebanon), deserts (the Sudan), plurals (the Netherlands), and names indicating a system of government (the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic). Such use is declining, but for some countries it remains common. Since the independence of Ukraine, most style guides have advised dropping the article, in part because the Ukrainian government was concerned about a similar issue involving prepositions.
Look up the in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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