日本大学歯学部紀要 49，15‒21，2021

Approaching Definiteness as a General Concept
Hugh Graham-Marr
Abstract

In general, EFL students encounter the concept of definiteness in English incidentally,
through the rules they are usually taught on the use of the definite article, the. However, it
seems unlikely that this is how native speakers approach the use of the and other markers ofdefiniteness, and more likely that they work off of a general concept of what definiteness is.
The author explores the question of whether it might be useful to introduce our students todefiniteness as a general principle, and suggests one approach for doing this.

Key words : definiteness, definite article, conceptions of language, ELT, EFL

Approaching Definiteness as a General Concept
Greenbaum in his Oxford English Grammar (1991, p. 621) says of a definite noun phrase that it“conveys the assumption that the hearer or reader can identify what it refers to.” This
conveyance is what is meant by the term “definiteness.” While definite noun phrases arecommonly associated with the use of the definite article, other parts of speech that denotedefiniteness are proper nouns, personal pronouns, and noun phrases containing a demonstrativeor possessive modifier (C. Lyons 1999:107-156). However, in ELT materials and in the ELTclassroom, definiteness is by and large only ever encountered as a collection of rules on article
use. This paper explores the question of whether it might help our students to be taught
definiteness as a general property of English.
Certainly, the difficulties with using definite and indefinite articles in English for learners
coming from languages without articles are well documented. Arabic, for instance, has a definite
article but no indefinite article and Arabic learners of English have particular difficulty with useof the English indefinite article, often omitting it when speaking or writing in English (Kharma,
1981). For Japanese learners of English, coming as they do from a language that “has no part ofspeech equivalent of English articles,” the use of articles is particularly problematic (Kimizuka
1967, p. 79). Indeed, so prevalent are mistakes with article use among learners that Miller (2005,
p. 80) suggests that such errors can be used as one of three major indicators that someone is a
non-native speaker. “In almost any piece of writing submitted by a non-native speaker of English,
three things will often indicate that the writer is working in a second language: the choice oftense and aspect, the subject and verb agreements, and the use of articles (the, a, an).” This

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日本大学歯学部紀要 49，15‒21，2021

despite the great exposure that learners of English have to articles. Hewson (1972, p. 131) notes,“the definite and the indefinite articles are among the ten most frequent words of English
discourse” and Master (2002) says the definite article, the, is the most frequently used word in
English. That is, any learner of English who has been in an English program for any decent
length of time will have encountered thousands and thousands of instances of use of both thedefinite article, the, and the two indefinite articles, a and an, and yet for many such learners
choosing when and where and which, if any, of these to use will remain one of the mostproblematic areas in their use of English.
The difficulty of this system is such that some teachers believe that article use cannot reallybe taught through the giving of rules (Krech and Driver, 1996). But this seems to be a minority
position. Master (1967, p. 216) argues that “formal instruction does have a positive effect” and thegreat majority of grammar practice books and of English language textbooks seem to take thisstance although some criticism has been made of the type of coverage given. Yoo (2009), forexample, notes that the cataphoric use of the receives little or no attention in ESL texts—
cataphoric use of the is where the is used in the first instance of use even though what specificobject is being referred to is not yet known. Yoo notes the lack of attention given to such use
despite the fact that around 40% of the academic use of the definite article is cataphoric. Anothercriticism of the coverage of articles in texts comes from Togo (2006, quoted in Yamasaki 2014)
who argues that some of the simple rules used to teach articles, such as “Use the when a noun
has already been used in the text,” fail to note how articles are being used in discourse andcannot really help students understand the article system in English. Applied for example to thefamous quote in Act V of Shakespeare’s Richard Ⅲ, this would produce “A horse, the horse! My
kingdom for the horse,” which would make little sense in this instance.
Yamasaki (2014, p. 32) describes the way Japanese EFL learners are taught definiteness. “In
school, Japanese EFL learners study basic rules about the usage of the definite article the.” Shegives an example from the Japanese Junior High School English textbook One World: English
Course 3 (Matsumoto, S. et al 2006).
（ 1 ）a. Use the when nouns are general terms.
b. Use the when it can be translated into sono* . (Sono is one of the Japanesedemonstratives followed by a noun which can be definitely recognized by hearers, orthe noun which has already been introduced in the text).
Raymond Murphy in his widely consulted Grammar in Use also approaches the use of the as aseries of rules, for example, “We use the when there is only one of something,” (p. 144). However,
he also asks the reader to imagine the context and choose use of the with context in mind. For
example, “We use the when we are thinking of one particular thing.” (p. 142). Could such acontextual approach be more generally applied to have students consider definiteness as a
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Approaching Definiteness as a General Concept

general property of English?
After all, as previously mentioned, definiteness, is not purely a function of the articles. The
author has noticed over the years that many of his students have problems with the definitenessof the personal pronouns. A typical example would be for a student to refer to ‘my friend’ in thefirst instance of use when what they really mean is ‘a friend of mine.’ The use of ‘my’ with its
sense of definiteness indicates that the listener has some knowledge of who the friend is. If, like
this, the noun phrase is given as definite without any context the unfortunate impression given
is that the student only has one friend. In contrast, I can say ‘my wife’ in the first instancebecause the assumption is I only have one wife. However, while mistakes like this do occur,
students can usually correct their use quite easily when it is pointed out to them, and there are
no real other definiteness issues with other parts of speech where definiteness can be seen, suchas the personal pronouns or the demonstratives. In the end analysis, it is only really the use of
the articles that is problematic for learners, and our focus on definiteness in ELT should continue
to be here. Still, the question remains of whether it would help students to consider definitenessin general terms.
A big problem with this is that there is no accepted explanation for what definiteness is. B.
Abbott writes in the entry for Definite and Indefinite in the Encyclopedia of Language &Linguistics that “what differentiates definite from indefinite NPs has been a matter of some
dispute.” (p. 392) She begins by describing the Bertrand Russell tradition of viewing definite
phrases as ‘unique,’ and points out how such an approach can be criticized because very often
the “descriptive content of a definite description is not sufficient to pick out a unique referent
from the world at large.” (p. 393). For this she gives the example of “Please put this on the table”
and says this is understood despite the large number of tables in the world. She then describes
the other primary way of approaching definiteness, to see it as denoting familiarity. This is the
tradition of the Danish linguist Paul Christopherson. However, as Abbott points out, in a
sentence such as “Mary asked the oldest student in the class to explain everything,” (p. 394) nofamiliarity with that student is needed in order to understand the referent. Finally, she gives
the example of “the wrong answer” as something that cannot be explained by either of the two
prevailing models.
Greenbaum (1996, p. 621) references both these traditions in the expanded definition of thatgiven in the first paragraph of this paper. “A definite noun phrase conveys the assumption thatthe hearer or reader can identify what it refers to. Identification may be assumed when (forexample) the phrase refers to something previously mentioned or uniquely identifiable fromgeneral knowledge or from the particular context.” In other words, for Greenbaum it is theidentification, whether through familiarity or uniqueness, that is the functionally important point.
This could perhaps be seen as a starting point for helping students consider the issue of
definiteness generally.

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A Hypothetical Construct of DefinitenessThe “natural partitions hypothesis is how Dedre Getner categorizes the idea that “thelinguistic distinction between nouns and predicate terms such as verbs and prepositions, isbased on a preexisting perceptual or conceptual distinction between concrete concepts such as
persons or things and predicative concepts of activity, change-of-state, or causal relations andthat the category corresponding to nouns is… more basic.” (p. 3). That is to say, the way welinguistically divide our world into NPs and predicates—a divide present in all languages—isprimarily representative of how we cognitively perceive the world and not an artifact oflanguage. If this is the case and if NPs are associated in some manner with our conceptual
entities of primary focus, then I would like to offer the following conjecture. If how we makesense of the world through language is through identifying and then tracking these thought
entities, however briefly, and in this way construct our conceptual maps of the world, and if
definiteness has a role to play at this conceptual level, markers of definiteness could be seen asfunctioning as tracking markers, or tags, indicating that the NP is associated with a particularconceptual entity that is something previously mentioned, or something that will be mentioned
again or expanded upon. In other words, definiteness markers such as the are there to indicatethat the NP you are considering is connected to an ongoing concept of interest. The NP istagged as one to be followed whether, as in Greenbaum’s inclusive definition, this is because it isunique, or familiar or due to some other indicator. In contrast, the indefinite marker, a/an
perhaps could be said to function more like an identification marker—it says something is of aclass and is specific, but doesn’t specify what member of that class it is that is to be tracked.
Note too that is not whether the speaker recognizes the item that is important, but that theutterer perceives that the listener has something (whether general or specific) that they canmark for tracking. Consider the following example.
• “Go into the room. There are four chairs in a square pattern. Choose a chair. Take thechair out of the room.”
In this example the speaker doesn’t know which of the four chairs was chosen, which of the four
is being followed by the listener. But the speaker recognizes that the listener has chosen, that
there is something to be followed.
A question for students as they come to consider definiteness might be something like:“Is this a thing that the listener/reader is following or needs to follow?”
It seems to me that something like this is occurring in the mind of the native speaker, that theuse of definiteness markers is not a matter of applying rules, or of repeating patterns of use
heard in the past, but of identifying the definiteness of the NP. So while the giving of rules can─ 18 ─

Approaching Definiteness as a General Concept

be a useful first step for the learner, it might be accompanied by such a more generalconsideration.
Below I attempt to describe how such a framework might work with what are commonly
given examples of the use of the.
• Second occurrence: The NPs we tag are those that have already shown some movement,
where this is at least the second instance of interaction, either directly…
• There was a vintage car on the road. I looked into the car.
..or indirectly where a ‘new’ NP is identifiably connected with an already mentioned NP and so
a continuance.
• The dashboard was walnut.
• Contextual use: When we’re in a context we could be said to be ‘following’ conditions withinthat context.
• Please pass me the salt. (at the dinner table)• Unique entities: This might be considered as the larger context within which we all exist andso the reference can be easily recognized and is followed as part of this larger world.
• Don’t look directly at the sun.
• General use of a word: This evokes an imagined NP that is ongoing in the mind of thereceiver and part of the larger context of the world.
• I don’t want to live in the city.
• Cataphoric uses: This conception would also account for the previously mentioned cataphoric
uses of the definite article and other definiteness markers, indicating from the very first
instance of use that these are NPs to be followed.
Consider the examples below, both instances of first use.
• Look! A bird!
• Look at the bird!
In the second instance ‘at’ introduces the idea that there is something to be ‘looked at,’ to befollowed. Hence the ‘the.’ In the first instance, there is simply the suggestion, ‘Look!’ use youreyes, but no suggestion yet that there is something to be tracked. Hence the use of theintroductory (or identifying) ‘A’ before ‘bird.’
Such a conception of the use of the doesn’t seem to always hold for idiomatic uses or for─ 19 ─

日本大学歯学部紀要 49，15‒21，2021

proper names with the as in the examples below.
• stick it to the man.
• We drove past the White House.
But as these are likely memorized as chunks it is perhaps not a large issue for learners.
This model would also seem to account for the use of the with “the wrong answer,” as wemight not know precisely what the nature of the wrong answer was but we could follow it
because it was THE wrong answer associated with this particular question. In contrast, we
would say “I gave a wrong answer,” when the listener doesn’t know what the referent questionis and so has nothing to follow.
In conclusion, while it continues to be useful for students to be presented with a series of ruleson the use of the definite article, ultimately we should perhaps be trying to help them develop asense of the definite that they can apply more generally. The author suggests that students canperhaps approach this by considering whether an NP is something that is being followed, orsomething to be marked for following, and that this might help them approach something closer
to native-speaker use of the articles.

References

Abbott, B. (2006) Definite and Indefinite Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition
Amsterdam: Elsevier
Getner, D. (1982) Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic Relativity versus Natural
Partitioning BBN Report No. 4854 Cambridge, Massachusetts: Bolt, Beranek and Newman
Inc.
Greenbaum, S. (1996) The Oxford English Grammar Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hewson, J. (1972) Article and noun in English. The Hague: Mouton
Kharma, N. (1981) Analysis of the errors committed by Arab university students in the use of
the English definite/indefinite articles. International Review of Applied Linguistics inLanguage Teaching, 19(4), 333-345. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/iral.
1981.19.1-4.333/html
Kimizuka, S. (1967) Teaching English to Japanese. Los Angeles: Anchor Enterprises
Krech, P. and Driver, K. (1996) Can articles be taught? [Online] www.umkc.edu/cad/nade/nadedocs/96conpap/kdcpap96.htm [2004, October 11]
Lyons, C. (1999) Definiteness Cambridge: Cambridge University Press http://catdir.loc.gov/
catdir/samples/cam032/98024724.pdf
Master, P. (2002) Information structure and English article pedagogy. System, 25(2), 215-232.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0345-251X(97)00010-9
Miller, J. (2005) Most of ELT students have trouble with the articles, International Education
Journal, ERC2004 Special Issue 2005, 5(5), 80-88. ISSN 1443-1475
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Approaching Definiteness as a General Concept

Murphy, R. (1994) English Grammar in Use: Second Edition Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
Yamasaki, K. (2014) The Usage of the Definite Article by Japanese EFL Learners. Journal of the
Ochanomizu University English Society (4), 31-47, 2014-03

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