Journal articles: 'Definite Articles'

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Jenks, Peter. "Articulated Definiteness without Articles." Linguistic Inquiry 49, no. 3 (July 2018): 501–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00280.

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While it lacks a definite article, Mandarin makes a principled distinction between unique and anaphoric definites: unique definites are realized with a bare noun, and anaphoric definites are realized with a demonstrative, except in subject position. The following proposals account for these facts: (a) bare nouns achieve definite interpretations via a last-resort type-shifting operator ι, which has a unique definite meaning; (b) demonstratives can occur as anaphoric definites because they have a semantic argument beyond their nominal restriction that can be filled by an index; and (c) bare nominal subjects are topics. A principle called Index! requires that indexical expressions be used whenever possible. Mandarin is contrasted with Cantonese, which, like English, is shown to have access to an ambiguous definite article.

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Faust, Noam, Nicola Lampitelli, and Shanti Ulfsbjorninn. "Articles of Italian unite! Italian definite articles without allomorphy." Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 63, no. 3 (April 13, 2018): 359–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2018.8.

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AbstractThis article examines the various realizations of the Italian definite article and concludes, against all previous accounts of this phenomenon, that neither the singular nor the plural realizations constitute a case of allomorphy stricto sensu. Significantly extending Larsen's (1998) analysis, the paper argues that all of the realizations of the definite article, including the problematic [i] and [ʎi], share a single underlying representation. It is proposed that the definite article is associated with a template with separate sites for definiteness and φ-features. It is further argued that [ʎ] is not a primitive entity in Italian; rather, it emerges from a very specific configuration in which /i/ and /l/ are conjoined and followed by a second realized vowel /i/. The templatic and segmental decompositions yield a morphologically unified analysis in which all of the realizations of the definite article are based on a single lexical representation followed by the application of regular phonology.

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Cyr, Danielle. "Cross-linguistic quantification: Definite articles vs demonstratives." Language Sciences 15, no. 3 (July 1993): 195–229. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0388-0001(93)90013-i.

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Paul, Ileana, Giuliana Giusti, and Gianluca E. Lebani. "Variation in the Occurrence and Interpretation of Articles in Malagasy: A Comparison with Italian." Languages 7, no. 3 (August 2, 2022): 202. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages7030202.

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In languages that have a definite article but no indefinite article, the definite article typically maps to definites, and the bare noun maps to indefinites. We investigate this mapping in Malagasy, which imposes an additional restriction: bare nouns cannot be subjects. We ask whether the subject can be interpreted as indefinite, given the obligatory nature of the article. We also look at DPs in other positions (direct object, clefted subjects) to determine whether the mapping between form and meaning is one-to-one. To answer these questions, we administered an on-line questionnaire that presented participants with the choice of the article or the bare noun in the different positions (subject, object, cleft) in contexts that favoured an indefinite/novel interpretation. As predicted, the article was obligatory in subject position, but disfavoured in the object and cleft position. These results confirm current descriptions in the literature. We compare these results with a similar case of definite article in indefinite nominals found in Italian and propose that the article does not carry definiteness features (at least in these cases) but overtly marks (abstract) Case assignment on subjects, while it can remain silent on objects.

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Ionin, Tania, Soondo Baek, Eunah Kim, Heejeong Ko, and Kenneth Wexler. "That’s not so different fromthe: Definite and demonstrative descriptions in second language acquisition." Second Language Research 28, no. 1 (January 2012): 69–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658311432200.

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This article investigates how adult Korean-speaking learners of English interpret English definite descriptions ( the book, the books) and demonstrative descriptions ( that book, those books). Korean lacks articles, but has demonstratives, and it is hypothesized that transfer leads learners to (initially) equate definites with demonstratives. Following J Hawkins (1991) , Roberts (2002) and Wolter (2006) , it is assumed that definite and demonstrative descriptions have the same central semantics of uniqueness, but differ in the domain relative to which uniqueness is computed: while the book denotes the unique book in the discourse, that book denotes the unique book in the immediately salient situation. A written elicited production task and a picture-based comprehension task are used to examine whether Korean-speaking learners of English are aware of this distinction. The results indicate that learners distinguish definites and demonstratives, but not as strongly as native English speakers; low-proficiency learners are particularly likely to interpret definite descriptions analogously to demonstrative descriptions, in both tasks. These results pose interesting conceptual and methodological questions for further research into the second language acquisition of article semantics.

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MONTRUL, SILVINA, and TANIA IONIN. "Transfer effects in the interpretation of definite articles by Spanish heritage speakers." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 13, no. 4 (September 1, 2010): 449–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728910000040.

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This study investigates the role of transfer from the stronger language by focusing on the interpretation of definite articles in Spanish and English by Spanish heritage speakers (i.e., minority language-speaking bilinguals) residing in the U.S., where English is the majority language. Spanish plural NPs with definite articles can express generic reference (Los elefantes tienen colmillos de marfil), or specific reference (Los elefantes de este zoológico son marrones). English plurals with definite articles can only have specific reference (The elephants in this zoo are brown), while generic reference is expressed with bare plural NPs (Elephants have ivory tusks). Furthermore, the Spanish definite article is preferred in inalienable possession constructions (Pedro levantó la mano “Peter raised the hand”), whereas in English the use of a definite article typically means that the body part belongs to somebody else (alienable possession). Twenty-three adult Spanish heritage speakers completed three tasks in Spanish (acceptability judgment, truth-value judgment, and picture–sentence matching tasks) and the same three tasks in English. Results show that the Spanish heritage speakers exhibited transfer from English into Spanish with the interpretation of definite articles in generic but not in inalienable possession contexts. Implications of this finding for the field of heritage language research and for theories of article semantics are discussed.

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Parker, Steve. "On the Behavior of Definite Articles in Chamicuro." Language 75, no. 3 (September 1999): 552. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/417060.

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Sánchez Argüelles, Gerardo, and Bettelou Los. "Incipient articles in Old East Scandinavian varieties." NOWELE / North-Western European Language Evolution 75, no. 2 (November 22, 2022): 160–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/nowele.00067.san.

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Abstract This is a study of the semantics of definiteness marking and of its applicability to the Old East Scandinavian linguistic scenario. Contrary to the Modern Continental Scandinavian languages, Old East Scandinavian varieties did not possess fully-fledged definite articles, although all three demonstrative systems (hinn, -inn, sá/þænn, and sjá/þænni) show some evidence of being used as markers of definiteness. A semantic analysis of these forms in extracts from the Scanian Law and Guta Lag reveals the differentiated intermediate stages along the cline of grammaticalisation these definiteness markers found themselves in during this linguistic period. This confirms, in turn, that despite not being employed as definite articles proper, hinn, -inn and sá/þænn show some degree of semantic bleaching.

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Vanderbauwhede, Gudrun, and Stijn Verleyen. "The French and Dutch noun phrase in contrast." French Syntax in Contrast 33, no. 2 (December 2, 2010): 267–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/li.33.2.09van.

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In this paper, we intend to show that grammaticalization can effectively be used as a parameter in language comparison by proposing a corpus-based account of the difference in distribution between demonstratives and definite articles in French and Dutch. Taking cases of literal but non-equivalent translation as a starting point, our study revealed that French demonstratives are very often translated by definite articles in Dutch, indicating a different semantico-grammatical function of demonstratives and definite articles in both languages. We propose to account for this bleaching of the French demonstrative by hypothesizing that Dutch demonstrative determiners have a much stronger ‘defining function’ than their French equivalents, and that the latter are in fact evolving towards definite articles, which would be an instantiation of the cyclical evolution from demonstrative to article, also found in the development from Latin to French.

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Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg, and Ron Zacharski. "Definite descriptions and cognitive status in English: why accommodation is unnecessary." English Language and Linguistics 5, no. 2 (September 25, 2001): 273–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1360674301000247.

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A commonly held view of English definite articles is that they signal that the referent of an NP is familiar to the addressee. However, it is well known that not all definite article phrases meet this familiarity requirement. To account for such nonfamiliar uses, Heim (1982) invokes the mechanism of ‘accommodation’, which enables an addressee to remedy a violation of the familiarity requirement by adding assumptions to the ‘common ground’. In this article we argue that the Givenness Hierarchy framework provides an insightful account of all uses of definite article phrases without requiring an appeal to accommodation. Such an account provides a unified treatment of definite article phrases, including demonstrative phrases and personal pronouns, while at the same time distinguishing among them in a principled way. This proposal is supported by results of a corpus-based examination of the use of definite articles and by an examination of cleft presuppositions.

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Majidova, Leyla. "Determiners used with definite and non-definite noun phrases in English language." Scientific Bulletin 2 (2020): 119–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.54414/vefq2416.

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In this article determiners used with definite and non-definite noun phrases in English language are studied. Determiners are words or phrases that precede a noun or noun phrase and serve to express its reference in the context. There are different kinds of determiners and each one serves a different function. These types include articles, quantifiers, demonstratives, possessives, and interrogatives.

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Elumalai, Kesavan Vadakalur. "The English Article Errors Encountered by Arabic EFL Undergraduate Students in the Writing Skill." International Journal of Linguistics 11, no. 6 (November 7, 2019): 10. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v11i6.15632.

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The research aims at English articles errors encountered by Arabic students in the English language classroom in writing. The study was analyzed in use of English articles (definite & indefinite) in the participant’s writing skill. It also describes the types and sources of definite and indefinite article errors while writing. The Data were collected from 40 EFL students from College of Arts, King Saud University, and Riyadh. Who learn English language at least a minimum of 8 years .They were assigned to write different title of a short composition passage of approximately 100 words in one-and-a-half hours per week. Errors were identified during analysis of ‘Omission of Articles’, ‘Omission of indefinite Articles’ , ‘Wrong insertion of Articles’, and ‘Confusion of Articles’ .And the observation revealed frequency of removing both the indefinite articles and the definite article was higher than the occurrence of inserting and substituting one article with the other. This study also proofs that errors of using ‘a’ much common than errors of using ‘an’ and ‘the’ in writing the story.

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Šimík, Radek, and Christoph Demian. "Definiteness, Uniqueness, and Maximality in Languages With and Without Articles." Journal of Semantics 37, no. 3 (May 30, 2020): 311–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffaa002.

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Abstract We present a number of experiments testing influential hypotheses about the meaning of definite descriptions (in languages with articles, represented here by German) and bare nominals (in articleless languages, represented here by Russian). Our results are in line with the commonly entertained hypothesis that definite descriptions convey uniqueness (if singular) or maximality (if plural), but fail to support two hypotheses about bare nominal interpretation, namely that singular bare nominals convey uniqueness ( Dayal 2004) and that topical bare nominals convey uniqueness/maximality ( Geist 2010, among many others). Uniqueness or maximality inferences are expected to arise via covert type-shifting under these approaches. Our results are compatible with what we take to be the null hypothesis, namely that bare nominals in articleless languages are existential and free of presuppositional semantics, even if they correspond—in their use—to definite descriptions ( Heim 2011).

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Holvoet, Axel, and Birutė Spraunienė. "Ad hoc Taxonomies: A Baltic Parallel to the Scandinavian Absolute Positives." Scandinavistica Vilnensis, no. 9 (December 20, 2014): 47–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.15388/scandinavisticavilnensis.2014.9.5.

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The article deals with the extension of definite markers into the domain of indefinite NPs in Scandinavian and Baltic. Definite articles evolving further down the grammaticalization path typically become markers of specificity (Greenberg 1978, Himmelmann 1998), but the development of definite markers in Baltic and Scandinavian languages (formally divergent as Baltic uses definite adjectives as the principal grammatical means of marking definiteness whereas Scandinavian employs definite articles for this purpose) has taken a different direction. After a brief discussion of the different types of extension of definite markers beyond their core domain in Baltic and Scandinavian, we focus on a specific construction in Scandinavian, the so-called ‘absolute positives’. We suggest that this construction is parallelled by certain Latvian constructions with definite adjectives, the effect being, in both cases, that of evoking ad hoc taxonomies. Finally, we present some considerations on the possible origin of the constructions discussed.

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Huehnergard, John, and Na'ama Pat-El. "Third-person possessive suffixes as definite articles in Semitic." Journal of Historical Linguistics 2, no. 1 (July 25, 2012): 25–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jhl.2.1.04hue.

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One of the best-known features of Neo-Ethio-Semitic languages is the use of the third-person possessive suffix as a definite article (Appleyard 2005, Rubin 2010). In this study we show that third-person possessive suffixes are also used as definite articles in other Semitic languages, although in none of them is this function fully grammaticalized, as it is in Ethio-Semitic. Beyond adding data that have received little attention so far, we offer an explanation for the phenomenon in Semitic, rather than concentrating on one branch, as has been done thus far in the literature.

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Pountain, Christopher. "The Development of the Articles in Castilian: A Functional Approach." Languages 4, no. 2 (March 28, 2019): 20. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages4020020.

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The development of the definite and indefinite articles in Castilian may be regarded as an instance of capitalization or adfunctionalization, following partial exaptation of the Latin demonstrative ille, which involves progressive widening without significant loss of function, the rendering of overt distinctions which were previously covert through the contrast between definite article, indefinite article and the “zero” determiner, the creation of new expressive possibilities and the facilitating of further distinctions in the grammatical system in combination with other determiners (usage with possessives, demonstratives and tal is examined).

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Ivancu, Ovidiu. "A Pedagogical Perspective on the Definite and the Indefinite Article in the Romanian Language. Challenges for Foreign Learners." Verbum 10 (December 20, 2019): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.15388/verb.6.

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All Romance languages have developed the definite and the indefinite article via the Vulgar Latin (Classical Latin did not use articles), the language of the Roman colonists. According to Joseph H. Greenberg (1978), the definite article predated the indefinite one by approximately two centuries, being developed from demonstratives through a complex process of grammaticalization. Many areas of nowadays` Romania were incorporated into the Roman Empire for about 170 years. After two military campaign, the Roman emperor Trajan conquered Dacia, east of Danube.The Romans imposed their own administration and inforced Latin as lingua franca.The language of the colonists, mixed with the native language and, later on, with various languages spoken by the many migrant populations that followed the Roman retreat resulted in a new language (Romanian), of Latin origins. The Romanian language, attested in the 16th Century, in documents written by foreign travellers, uses four different types of articles. Being a highly inflected language, Romanian changes the form of the articles according to the gender, the number and the case of the noun As compared to the other Romance languages, Romanian uses the definite article enclitically. Thus, the definite article and the noun constitute a single word. The present paper aims at discussing, analysing and providing an overview of the use of definite and indefinite articles. The general norm and its various exceptions are examined from a broader perspective, synchronically and diachronically. The pedagogical perspective is meant to offer a comprehensible synthesis to foreign learners.

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Lee, Kent. "Definite and Indefinite Articles With Abstract Nouns in L2." Modern English Education 21, no. 4 (November 30, 2020): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.18095/meeso.2020.21.4.1.

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Hawkins, John A. "On (in)definite articles: implicatures and (un)grammaticality prediction." Journal of Linguistics 27, no. 2 (September 1991): 405–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022226700012731.

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Since Paul Grice published ‘Logic and conversation’ in 1975, there have been a number of attempts to develop his programmatic remarks on conversational and conventional implicatures further (see Gazdar, 1979; Atlas & Levinson, 1981; Horn, 1985; Sperber & Wilson, 1986; and especially Levinson, 1983, and the references cited therein). The result has been a growing understanding of the relationship between semantics and pragmatics, and more generally of human reasoning in everyday language use. Many aspects of natural language understanding that were previously thought to be part of the conventional meaning of a given expression can now be shown to be the result of conversational inference. And with cancellability as the diagnostic test, a number of traditional problems in the study of meaning are yielding to more satisfactory analyses. Even more ambitiously, implicatures are penetrating into core areas of the syntax, as pragmatic theories of increasing subtlety are proposed for ‘grammatical’ phenomena such as Chomsky's (1981, 1982) binding principles (see Reinhart, 1983, and Levinson, 1987a, b, 1991).

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Lewis, Rebecca. "Associative Plurality and the DP/NP typology." Proceedings of the Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic 6, no. 1 (December 19, 2021): 5047. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/ptu.v6i1.5047.

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This paper investigates the phenomenon of additive plural morphology being used to denote the associative plural in a variety of languages. A novel empirical generalization is proposed: Languages with identical additive and associative plural morphology lack free standing definite articles. This follows a line of generalizations made by Boskovic (2008, 2012), who argues that languages without free standing definite articles do not project the DP layer, though the proposed generalization groups affixal article languages with languages without articles (see also Talic (2017)). I propose a new analysis of associative plurals that yields the empirical generalization for free. I argue that Num, the position of additive plural morphology, moves to Associative, which heads a projection on top of the nominal domain. This movement operation is blocked by the presence of D/DP in free standing definite article languages.

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Lee, Kang, Catherine Ann Cameron, Murrary J. Linton, and Anne K. Hunt. "Referential place-holding in Chinese children's acquisition of English articles." Applied Psycholinguistics 15, no. 1 (January 1994): 29–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400006962.

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ABSTRACTThis longitudinal study examines the acquisition of English articles by three 6-year-old, second language learning children whose native tongue is Chinese, a language without articles. Brown's coding scheme and an extended coding scheme were used in scoring the corpora of children's responses to a Syntax Elicitation Task. Results revealed that the Chinese children's acquisition of the definite article differed from- what had been previously found using Brown's coding scheme with English as first language learners and second language learning children of other native language origins. Chinese children's use of the definite article developed through an unmarked phase, a referential place-holding phase, a marked phase, and a referential substitution phase before the definite article was fully acquired. The acquisition of the indefinite article, on the other hand, was similar to the acquisition pattern already reported for children learning English as a first language or as a second language. It is suggested that referential place-holding, as well as referential substitution, might not be a Chinese-specific second language learning phenomenon; rather, they might be derived from a universal referential strategy for learning articles.

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Chrabaszcz, Anna, and Nan Jiang. "The role of the native language in the use of the English nongeneric definite article by L2 learners: A cross-linguistic comparison." Second Language Research 30, no. 3 (June 3, 2014): 351–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658313493432.

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The study uses an elicited imitation (EI) task to examine the effect of the native language on the use of the English nongeneric definite article by highly proficient first-language (L1) Spanish and Russian speakers and to test the hierarchy of article difficulty first proposed by Liu and Gleason (2002). Our findings suggest that there is a clear influence of L1 on participants’ reproduction of the second-language (L2) definite article in nongeneric contexts, but that various contexts present different levels of difficulty for the two L1 groups. The participants whose L1 is Spanish – a language with an article system – perform at a native-like level of accuracy in the grammatical condition of the test, whereas the participants whose L1 is Russian – a language without articles – demonstrate a tendency to omit definite articles in the same contexts. In the ungrammatical condition, Spanish speakers differ from the native speaker control group in their suppliance of the definite article in conventional and cultural contexts, while Russian participants supply the definite article significantly less than both the Spanish participants and the control group along all article categories. The study offers novel insights into what constitutes article difficulty for L2 learners from different L1s.

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Chondrogianni, Vasiliki, Nada Vasić, Theodoros Marinis, and Elma Blom. "Production and on-line comprehension of definiteness in English and Dutch by monolingual and sequential bilingual children." Second Language Research 31, no. 3 (January 7, 2015): 309–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658314564461.

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The present article examines production and on-line processing of definite articles in Turkish-speaking sequential bilingual children acquiring English and Dutch as second languages (L2) in the UK and in the Netherlands, respectively. Thirty-nine 6–8-year-old L2 children and 48 monolingual (L1) age-matched children participated in two separate studies examining the production of definite articles in English and Dutch in conditions manipulating semantic context, that is, the anaphoric and the bridging contexts. Sensitivity to article omission was examined in the same groups of children using an on-line processing task involving article use in the same semantic contexts as in the production task. The results indicate that both L2 children and L1 controls are less accurate when definiteness is established by keeping track of the discourse referents (anaphoric) than when it is established via world knowledge (bridging). Moreover, despite variable production, all groups of children were sensitive to the omission of definite articles in the on-line comprehension task. This suggests that the errors of omission are not due to the lack of abstract syntactic representations, but could result from processes implicated in the spell-out of definite articles. The findings are in line with the idea that variable production in child L2 learners does not necessarily indicate lack of abstract representations (Haznedar and Schwartz, 1997).

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Collins, James N. "Reasoning about definiteness in a language without articles." Semantics and Linguistic Theory 26 (October 15, 2016): 82. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/salt.v26i0.3821.

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Most theories of implicature make reference to a notion of alternatives. Interlocutors reason about what the speaker could have said. In this paper, I investigate the structure of these alternatives. In particular, I ask how these alternative utterances are constrained by the interlocutors' grammar. I argue that in order to derive certain implicatures, alternative utterances must be analyzed like actual utterances, as fully compositional structures appropriately generated by the grammar. The data supporting this position come from implicatures generated by indefinite bare noun phrases in Tagalog. I show that Tagalog indefinites give rise to non-uniqueness implicatures via competition with definites, as in English. However, unlike English, definite and indefinite interpretations of Tagalog NPs are not signalled by dedicated articles, but by verbal affixes. Therefore, in order to generate the observed implicatures, pragmatic competition must take into consideration the NP's broader syntactic context. Supporting the view that implicature calculation is sensitive to the morphosyntactic structure of alternative utterances, I show that in cases where the alternative is not grammatically well-formed, the implicature does not arise. These data provide evidence that only grammatically well-formed structures are able to enter into pragmatic competition.

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Robertson, Daniel. "Variability in the use of the English article system by Chinese learners of English." Second Language Research 16, no. 2 (April 2000): 135–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/026765800672262975.

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It is well known that the Chinese language does not have functional equivalents of the English definite and indefinite article. Correspondingly, there is plenty of observational evidence that Chinese learners have difficulty with the article system in English. In particular, these learners have a marked tendency to omit the article where native speakers of English would use one. In this article we report the results of an experimental investigation of the variable use of the definite and indefinite articles by 18 Chinese learners of English. A referential communication task was used to elicit samples of the speech of these learners which was rich in referring noun phrases. From the resulting corpus 1884 noun phrases were coded, using a taxonomy based on Hawkins' (1978) description of the definite and indefinite articles and demonstratives in English. The analysis shows an overall rate of 78% suppliance of articles in contexts where a native speaker would use the definite or indefinite article. Of the remaining 22% of contexts where articles are not used, we found that many of the instances of nonsuppliance of articles could be explained by three principles: 1) a syntactic principle of ‘determiner drop’, whereby an NP with definite or indefinite reference need not be overtly marked for [± definiteness] if it is included in the scope of the determiner of a preceding NP; 2) a ‘recoverability’ principle, whereby an NP need not be marked for [± definiteness] if the information encoded in this feature is recoverable from the context; and 3) a ‘lexical transfer principle’, whereby some of these learners are using demonstratives (particularly this) and the numeral one as markers of definiteness and indefiniteness respectively. However, these principles do not account for all the instances of non-native-like usage in the corpus. There remains a residue of 206 noun phrases without articles in contexts where native speakers would use an article.There are identical contexts, moreover, where these learners use the articles. We suggest that this evidence of unsystematic variation in the use of the articles by these learners lends support to the hypothesis that the optionality in the use of articles is due to difficulty acquiring the correct mapping from the surface features of definiteness and referentiality ( the, a, and the zero article Ø) onto the abstract features of the DP.

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Crosthwaite, Peter. "L2 English article use by L1 speakers of article-less languages." International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 2, no. 1 (July 8, 2016): 68–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.2.1.03cro.

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This paper adopts the Integrated Contrastive Model (Granger 1996) to an examination of the use of articles in the L2 English written production of L1 speakers of three article-less languages (Mandarin Chinese, Korean and Thai) across four L2 proficiency levels. Data is sourced from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE; Ishikawa 2011, 2013), comprising 575 written essays totalling 125,588 words across two writing prompts. Accuracy of zero, indefinite and definite articles is measured using Pica’s (1983) Target Language Use across Bickerton’s (1981) semantic/pragmatic article contexts (generic, specific definite, specific indefinite and non-specific indefinite). The results show two different orders of article accuracy depending on L1 background, as well as effects of writing prompt on the accuracy of certain article forms, and evidence of pseudo-longitudinal development for particular article usages as L2 proficiency increases, although not in all cases. Massive overproduction of indefinite/definite articles in generic contexts is problematic for all three L2 groups regardless of L1 background and L2 proficiency. However, Mandarin L2 English users appear to enjoy a significant advantage in L2 article accuracy over Korean or Thai L2 English users in almost all contexts of use and L2 proficiency levels, providing further potential evidence that the often reported grammaticalisation of definiteness/specificity markers in L1 Mandarin is aiding Mandarin L2 English users’ acquisition of the English article system.

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Thomas, Margaret. "The acquisition of English articles by first- and second-language learners." Applied Psycholinguistics 10, no. 3 (September 1989): 335–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400008663.

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ABSTRACTChild first-language (L1) learners frequently use the definite article in referential indefinite contexts, that is, with nouns appearing in the discourse for the first time, where adults use the indefinite article. Adult second-language (L2) learners also overgeneralize the definite article. Research reported here shows 30 L2 learners use the in referential indefinite contexts at significantly higher rates than in nonreferential contexts. Thus, both L1 and L2 learners may share an initial hypothesis associating the with referential nouns. This evidence of a strategy common to L1 and L2 learners invites reinterpretation of both L1 and L2 acquisition data.

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Lipovšek, Frančiška. "Misconceptions about Article Use in English." ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries 3, no. 1-2 (June 20, 2006): 99–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/elope.3.1-2.99-113.

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The paper addresses some major misconceptions about article use in English, proceeding from purely syntactic issues to those relating directly to pragmatics. It is based on authentic, perfectly acceptable examples of article use that many Slovenian students of English would describe as ‘odd’ or ‘not in accordance with the rules’. The students’ explanations as to why the examples in question should be ruled out confirm the hypothesis that misconceptions about article use are largely ascribable to an insufficient understanding of grammatical rules. The rules governing article use are often misunderstood due to inaccurate interpretations of the terms defining/restrictive, definite, identifying, specifying, classifying, etc. The commonest mistake is equating defining with definite, and defining/restrictive with identifying, the consequence being the overuse of the definite article. Another important point made in the paper is that article use is a matter of pragmatics. The choice between the definite and indefinite articles reflects the speaker’s decision to present a piece of information as hearer-old or hearer-new respectively.

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Bjornstad, Jennifer. "Der? Die? Das? Easing the Struggle to Learn Definite Articles." Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German 47, no. 1 (March 2014): 69–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/tger.10157.

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Wolf, Yuval, and Joel Walters. "Definite articles in the context of literary and scientific writings." Journal of Pragmatics 33, no. 6 (June 2001): 965–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(01)80037-0.

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Ishikawa, Masataka. "A note on reference and definite articles in Old Spanish." WORD 48, no. 1 (April 1997): 61–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1997.11432463.

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Aughey, Arthur. "Fifth nation: The United Kingdom between definite and indefinite articles." British Politics 5, no. 3 (September 2010): 265–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/bp.2010.8.

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Rooryck, Johan. "Reconsidering inalienable possession with definite determiners in French." Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 8, no. 1 (April 26, 2022): 1–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.233.

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In many Romance and Germanic languages, definite determiners can indicate possession for a subset of nouns that have often been called nouns of ‘inalienable’ possession. This paper addresses the question of why and how the definite determiner contributes to the interpretation of ‘inalienable possession’. Following Freeze (1992) and others, I argue that ‘inalienable possession’ cannot be properly characterized as inalienable and does not involve possession. Relevant ‘inalienably possessed’ nouns are not restricted to body parts, but include a broader set of nouns that are commonly expected to be located in or on the possessor: mental or physical faculties, facial expressions, as well as articles of clothing, protection, and adornment. I argue that the relevant cases are best captured in terms of an analysis that combines a syntactic configuration for locative prepositions (RP in den Dikken’s 2006 sense) with the semantics of weak definites for the ‘inalienable’ use of the definite determiner. All observed restrictions derive from the requirement that the semantic properties of weak definites and the syntactic configuration of the RP need to be compositionally respected. Finally, I propose some ideas about how this analysis can be extended to crosslinguistic variation in German and English.

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Rooryck, Johan. "Reconsidering inalienable possession with definite determiners in French." Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 8, no. 1 (April 26, 2022): 1–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.233.

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In many Romance and Germanic languages, definite determiners can indicate possession for a subset of nouns that have often been called nouns of ‘inalienable’ possession. This paper addresses the question of why and how the definite determiner contributes to the interpretation of ‘inalienable possession’. Following Freeze (1992) and others, I argue that ‘inalienable possession’ cannot be properly characterized as inalienable and does not involve possession. Relevant ‘inalienably possessed’ nouns are not restricted to body parts, but include a broader set of nouns that are commonly expected to be located in or on the possessor: mental or physical faculties, facial expressions, as well as articles of clothing, protection, and adornment. I argue that the relevant cases are best captured in terms of an analysis that combines a syntactic configuration for locative prepositions (RP in den Dikken’s 2006 sense) with the semantics of weak definites for the ‘inalienable’ use of the definite determiner. All observed restrictions derive from the requirement that the semantic properties of weak definites and the syntactic configuration of the RP need to be compositionally respected. Finally, I propose some ideas about how this analysis can be extended to crosslinguistic variation in German and English.

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Marinis, Theodore. "acquisition of clitic objects in Modern Greek : single clitics, clitic doubling, clitic left dislocation." ZAS Papers in Linguistics 15 (January 1, 2000): 259–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.21248/zaspil.15.2000.32.

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The present study is concerned with Single Clitics, as weil as with Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions and will test the Uniformity Hypothesis (Sportiehe 1992), according to which all three constructions involve the same underlying structure. It will be shown that: - acquisition data pose a problem for the Uniformity Hypothesis (Sportiche 1992) and support rather the idea that Single Clitic, Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions do not involve the same underlying structure, - omission of definite articles in Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions parallels omission of definite articles in simple DPs, - selective omission of some types of Determiners, i.e. definite articles and use of another type of Determiners, i.e. clitic pronouns, can be explained in terms of the different feature specification of words belonging to the category D and the different status of clitics vs. definite articles.

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Dolgina, A. E., and S. A. Makarova. "INDIVIDUALIZATION IN ACADEMIC DISCOURSE: TYPES OF DEFINITE REFERENCE (BASED ON ENGLISH LINGUISTIC LITERATURE)." Culture and Text, no. 50 (2022): 143–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.37386/2305-4077-2022-3-143-153.

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The article focuses on the functioning of the structure “definite article + noun” denoting the cognitive process of individualization in various types of definite reference. The study based on the three basic varieties of English linguistic literature including a grammar book, a collection of academic articles and a popular monograph aims to identify the discursive features of cataphoric, direct anaphoric and indirect anaphoric references and their role in providing a clear and unambiguous description. It has resulted in establishing the differences in the use of the definite references, their specific features as well as their link with a genre and the author’s intentions.

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Power, R. J. D., and M. F. Dal Martello. "The use of the definite and indefinite articles by Italian preschool children." Journal of Child Language 13, no. 1 (February 1986): 145–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900000350.

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ABSTRACTIn deciding whether to use a definite or indefinite referring expression a speaker must apply a pragmatic rule: the definite article is usually appropriate if the listener is already familiar with the referent, and the indefinite article if not. Several studies have investigated at what age this rule is mastered by children. The most satisfactory procedure so far adopted is a task in which the subject must narrate a pictorially-presented story to another child who cannot see the pictures. It has been found that 5-year-old children already follow the correct rule quite well, except that they make ‘egocentric errors’ (i.e. using the definite article when first mentioning a referent) in around 15–35% of instances. Experiment 1 here confirms that this pattern of results is also obtained using Italian children. A problem with this experimental design is then raised: it does not exclude the possibility that subjects might produce the correct response distribution by following a rule based on the SPEAKER'S familiarity with the referent, not the listener's. To check this possibility, a modified design was used (Experiment 2) in which the subject had to narrate the story to two listeners, one after the other. Significantly more egocentric errors were made on the second narration of the story than on the first narration.

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Onkova, Liubov. "DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ARTICLES IN THE TITLES OF LA FONTAINE'S FABLES." Bulletin of Perm National Research Polytechnic University. Issues in Linguistics And Pedagogics, no. 1 (March 31, 2016): 43–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.15593/2224-9389/2016.1.5.

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al-Sulaimaan, Dr Misbah M. D., and Ahmed R. Kh Alsinjari. "Problems of Translating Definite and Indefinite Articles from English into Arabic." International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences 3, no. 6 (2018): 1076–131. http://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.3.6.25.

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Adamou, Evangelia. "Temporal uses of definite articles and demonstratives in Pomak (Slavic, Greece)." Lingua 121, no. 5 (April 2011): 871–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2010.12.001.

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Pfaff, Alexander. "Reunited after 1000 years. The development of definite articles in Icelandic." Nordic Journal of Linguistics 42, no. 02 (July 25, 2019): 165–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0332586519000155.

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AbstractThis article traces the diachronic development from the Proto Norse demonstrative hinn via the Old Icelandic definite article(s) to the Modern Icelandic article system. This demonstrative gave rise to two distinct article elements during the Viking period that are well-attested from Old Icelandic onwards, a freestanding and a suffixed article.Based on evidence from Old Icelandic, I argue for a categorial distinction between an adjectival and a nominal article, which does not entirely coincide with a mere morpho-phonological distinction. The former, which mostly occurs as a freestanding element, is a genuine component of AP, not an immediate constituent of the nominal extended projection. The latter, which only occurs in suffixal form, heads a low projection in the extended nominal projection and has scope only over the noun. For Modern Icelandic, on the other hand, I will adopt the idea that free and suffixed articles are two surface manifestations of the same element.The diachronic perspective is complemented by an examination of the development of seven adjectivally modified definite noun phrase patterns. This empirical survey reveals several surprising facts: The standard pattern of modification in Modern Icelandic was virtually non-existent prior to the 17th century, and double definiteness persisted until the early 20th century. Likewise, certain modificational patterns otherwise found in Mainland Scandinavian were dominant between the 16th and 19th century. This latter observation points to a competition between two adjectival articles hinn vs. sá similar to the one that had taken place earlier in Mainland Scandinavian. In Icelandic, however, sá did not replace hinn, and, in the long run, a pattern not comprising an adjectival article became the dominant one.

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Kwame, Abukari, and Marit Westergaard. "The acquisition of English articles among L1 Dagbani L2 English learners." Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 65, no. 4 (November 10, 2020): 496–534. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2020.20.

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AbstractThis study investigates the acquisition of articles in L2 English by L1 speakers of Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Ghana. Dagbani differs from English in that it has two definite articles, no indefinite article, and a zero-article which may express definiteness, indefiniteness as well as genericity. The study consisted of a Forced-choice task (FCT) and an Acceptability judgement task (AJT) which were administered to Dagbani teenagers with an intermediate proficiency in English (n = 45) and a group of native English speakers as controls (n = 8). The results showed that the learners’ article choice was based on definiteness, not specificity (i.e., no fluctuation between the two) and that they had slightly more problems with indefinite than definite contexts, while generic contexts were the most problematic. Except for a certain task effect as well as a possible interference of instruction (in the FCT), the results can be argued to generally be due to influence from the L1 and to the difficulty of feature reassembly.

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Montero Gálvez, Sonia. "The Definite and Indefinite Articles of Spanish (or Castilian) Language in Context." Verba Hispanica 26, no. 1 (January 18, 2019): 99–127. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/vh.26.1.99-127.

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The present paper addresses the contrast between the definite article (el/la/los/las) and the indefinite article (un/a/os/as) from a cognitive approach that not only poses a single meaning for each kind of article, but also highlights the pragmatic (or contextual) aspects that underlie that meaning and establish the use of one form or another. The article’s meaning is shaped by the way we conceptualize the reference: the definite article implies an inclusive reference characterized by the uniqueness of the referent, while the indefinite article implies an exclusive reference characterized by the lack of uniqueness. The possibility to choose one or other way depends on contextual aspects related to the common knowledge shared by the interlocutors, the communicative context (linguistic and situational) and the space (physical or mental) where the referent is located.

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CHONDROGIANNI, VASILIKI, THEODOROS MARINIS, SUSAN EDWARDS, and ELMA BLOM. "Production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and clitic pronouns by Greek sequential bilingual children and monolingual children with specific language impairment." Applied Psycholinguistics 36, no. 5 (May 15, 2014): 1155–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716414000101.

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ABSTRACTThe present study compared production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and third person direct object clitic pronouns in Greek-speaking typically developing, sequential bilingual (L2-TD) children and monolingual children with specific language impairment (L1-SLI). Twenty Turkish Greek L2-TD children, 16 Greek L1-SLI children, and 31 L1-TD Greek children participated in a production task examining definite articles and clitic pronouns and, in an on-line comprehension task, involving grammatical sentences with definite articles and clitics and sentences with grammatical violations induced by omitted articles and clitics. The results showed that the L2-TD children were sensitive to the grammatical violations despite low production. In contrast, the children with SLI were not sensitive to clitic omission in the on-line task, despite high production. These results support a dissociation between production and on-line comprehension in L2 children and for impaired grammatical representations and lack of automaticity in children with SLI. They also suggest that on-line comprehension tasks may complement production tasks by differentiating between the language profiles of L2-TD children and children with SLI.

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Sőrés, Anna. "« Articles contractés » ou « preposizioni articolate » ?" Revue Romane / Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures 55, no. 1 (April 12, 2018): 70–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/rro.15012.sor.

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Abstract The morphemes such as the French au or the Italien nel are designed by different terms in grammars of Romance languages, which shows that it is difficult to identify the lexical category of this type of fusional morpheme. The aim of this paper is to propose a detailed analysis of these contracted forms. I suggest that the fusion occurs during a secondary grammaticalization. This process involves, on the one hand, the definite article, i.e. a grammatical element, and, on the other hand, some prepositions which, semantically, can be functional or lexical but which function syntactically as grammatical elements. The analysis shows that case inflection of nominals has been transferred to the preposition while the other categories appear in the article which merged with prepositions. Therefore, the fusional forms can be considered as prepositions marked by the grammatical categories of gender, number and definiteness.

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Kupreyev, Maxim. "The Origins and Development of the Definite Article in Egyptian-Coptic." Studies in Ancient Art and Civilisation 18 (December 30, 2014): 223–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.12797/saac.18.2014.18.14.

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The first appearance of the emphatic demonstratives pA/tA/nA in northern Egyptian letters of the 6th Dynasty and their absence from southern Egyptian sources indicates the growing difference between the language variants spoken in these broadly defined regions. Originating from the Old Egyptian pronominal stems p-/t-/n-, the use of these new demonstratives expands rapidly during the Middle Kingdom. In their weak form as definite articles, they indicate that a noun is knownin discourse and thus signal a hitherto hidden grammatical category – definiteness. Once the definite article is grammaticalised and starts to be used with a priori definite nouns such as pA nTr wa ‘the sole god’ or pA HqA ‘the ruler’ (18th Dynasty), the indefinite article appears. The further development in Demotic and Coptic shows that the article was on the way to becoming a noun marker. When attached to a relative phrase, it created a new noun, which could be further determined (xenpetnanouf ‘some good deeds’, ppetouaab ‘the saint’). The following article traces the regional origins of the definite article as well as the main principles governing their development.

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Frazier, Stefan, and Lorena Llosa. "Meaning differences in the use of the null vs. the definite articles." English Text Construction 2, no. 1 (March 24, 2009): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/etc.2.1.01fra.

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In this paper we present the results of a comparison analysis (quantitative and qualitative) of the rates of occurrence of the null article Ø2 against the definite article the referring specifically to the five names of the seasons. Instances of Ø2 in authentic contexts have previously only been minimally described; Chesterman (1991) places Ø2 at a higher level of definiteness than the while Master (1997) describes the choice between Ø2 and the as different degrees of familiarity. A revision of the latter, this paper’s findings — derived from corpus-linguistic analysis using MICASE (spoken) and the Brown corpus (written) — demonstrate that, very generally, when preceding the name of a season, Ø2 indicates a specific point in time or the start of a season while the indicates a period of time. The findings also reaffirm the strength of postmodification in determining the need for the definite article. One implication for English language teaching is discussed.

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Alhaisoni, Eid, Daya Ram Gaudel, and Khalid M. Al-Zuoud. "Article Errors in the English Writing of Saudi EFL Preparatory Year Students." Advances in Language and Literary Studies 8, no. 1 (February 1, 2017): 72. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.1p.72.

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This study aims at providing a comprehensive account of the types of errors produced by Saudi EFL students enrolled in the preparatory year programe in their use of articles, based on the Surface Structure Taxonomies (SST) of errors. The study describes the types, frequency and sources of the definite and indefinite article errors in writing compositions. Data were collected from written samples of 150 students. They were given one-and-a-half hours to write on one of four different descriptive topics. Analysis of inter-lingual and intra-lingual sources of article errors revealed that the frequency of eliminating both the indefinite articles and the definite article was higher than the frequency of inserting and substituting one article with the other. The study also shows that errors of using ‘a’ were more common than errors of using ‘an’ and ‘the’ in the writing texts. This result also indicates that L1 interference strongly influences the process of second language acquisition of the articles, having a negative effect on the learning process Pedagogical practices including comparison of article use in learners’ both language systems may improve learners’ ability to use the articles correctly in writing and the other language skills.

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Hansson, Kristina, Ulrika Nettelbladt, and Laurence B. Leonard. "Indefinite Articles and Definite Forms in Swedish Children with Specific Language Impairment." First Language 23, no. 3 (October 2003): 343–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/01427237030233005.

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Mora-Marín, David F. "Reconstruction of the Proto-Ch’olan demonstrative pronouns, deictic enclitics, and definite articles." Transactions of the Philological Society 107, no. 1 (March 2009): 98–129. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968x.2009.01214.x.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Definite Articles'

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