Talk:Article (grammar)

message: I've removed the following section:
The article is omitted in prepositional phrases that refer to traveling to places where a change in social behaviors is required. Hence the pattern "Mary had a little lamb. ... It followed her to school one day" (rather than "to the school") is standard, as is "I'll see you in court" (rather than "in the court").  Most English speakers say "in town" but "in the city".  All English speakers say "go to college"; British speakers will also say "go to university" and "go to hospital" (for American speakers, it is "go to the hospital").  These phrases are a matter of custom rather than following clear rule. 
In fact, there is continuing debate over the use and semantics of noun phrases with articles. It is more customary to consider the article as 'not used' rather than 'omitted' in these cases, as claiming that something is 'omitted' is to make wider claims about the grammatical system that are far from easy to substantiate. The reason for not using an article is not so much that a change of behaviour is required, as claimed above, but more that the noun phrase under the scope of the article is referred to as an institution as opposed to a particular place. "I'll see you in court" for a court case as opposed to "I'll see you in the court" because this is where we are meeting next. Also, I study "at university" (institution), but left my jacket "in the university" (location). Exceptions, as usual, seem to be the rule, as e.g. "I went to the police station" is used in both senses.
as I consider the initial claim to be dubious (though with no evidence) and the following paragraph disputing it should not appear in the article itself. I'll leave it to more learned grammarians to decide what's true and what's not, but with this section in place the article was self-contradictory. Dave.Dunford (talk) 17:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Reduction and omission

message: What about:
* the Indo-iranian languages?
* all Non-indoeuropean languages?
Considering semantics the grammatical article transfers very little information, than just a repetition meaning "aforementioned", so it would be interesting to know how and whether definiteness is extensively used in other languages than the European ones (including Arabic), or if it is just an Esperantean lalalalala malhabitus. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 08:04, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-indoeuropean?

message: The article says "there is no partitive article in English", yet http://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/gr/det5.html, http://www.thefrenchexperiment.com/learn-french/partitive-article.php and various other sources seem happy that "some" is a partitive article. Is that a minority view, or should it be mentioned here? 86.161.42.191 (talk) 21:18, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: After nearly nine years I have seen this question, which is still unanswered. Well, "some" is indeed sometimes used rather like a partitive article, but it is optional in these instances and the Oxford dictionary I have prefers to treat it as a determiner. I think it is best to leave it out, as it is not required. LynwoodF (talk) 20:25, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

text: I see that "some" is mentioned in passing, but not included in the table. I think that is just about right. LynwoodF (talk) 10:47, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

text: I remembered that I have a couple of Catalan grammars by Pompeu Fabra, who could be regarded as the horse's mouth on the matter of the Catalan language. In the one aimed at the French market, he tells us, «Les articles partitifs français ne se traduisent pas en catalan.» He gives examples, such as: J'ai du pain, Tinc pa, Je vends des œufs, Venc ous. So I am going to remove the entries in respect of Catalan. LynwoodF (talk) 22:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Partitive article 

message: There is mentioned almoust exclusively european languages, and not mentioned non european. Alsou, this article are more about articles in english language, than about articles in general.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.148.159.114 (talk) 07:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The article relates other languages' articles to those of English. This is to be expected seeing as English Wikipedia is predominantly read by L1 English speakers. I agree that there should be more written about non-European languages, but until someone who can-and-will contribute this information adds it, there is nothing to be done. Dyolf87 (talk) 15:34, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: This article should be improved

message: More and more lately, I've been seeing websites where they list titles of things beginning with "The" under "T", even when the following word begins with a different letter (The Smashing Pumpkins, "The Legend of Zelda").  I don't know if they dropped that rule or not, or if it's just a weird thing the program does, or if the users just don't remember the rule, but I was taught ages ago that "The" should be ignored if it's at the beginning and the item should be listed under the letter of the next word.  Sometimes ", the" ends up being put at the end("Wizard of Oz, the").  This should also go for "A" and "An", also being articles.
Examples:
http://www.ocremix.org/t/
http://www.lyrics.com/index.php/artists/start/th/800
It's really driving me crazy, trying to find something under S and finding out it's under T for the wrong reason.. Should this be mentioned somewhere on this page, or just dropped altogether?  Thanks. ChrisRJ (talk) 17:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoever wrote the program should have known better: it is not a new problem as some indexes in old books do the same thing and even group entries under letters of the alphabet without sorting them into order. "The father is going to market": correctness depends on the statements before and after this one, e.g. will the reader know which father is the relevant one or not?--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 13:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "The" in front of the title 

message: Most of the article is currently under a section for The, yet there is no corresponding section for A/An. Why the disparity? I'm going to check the archives in case someone just deleted it, and if I don't find anything I'll add the section.--SlothMcCarty (talk) 23:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, there is a separate article on A and an. There used to be a separate article on The, but it was merged some time ago, on the grounds that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Any objections to merging in A/An? --SlothMcCarty (talk) 18:31, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  A and an is too detailed and English-specific to be merged into this article. Nor can it be accused of being a dictionary entry. Another solution (if you're itching to restructure something) is to create a new English articles article in the English grammar series, covering both the and a(n). CapnPrep (talk) 21:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  After stumbling upon French articles and German articles, I'm inclined to agree, and I don't know why I didn't see it before. That would neatly solve the "worldwide view" problem too. --SlothMcCarty (talk) 07:25, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''The'' but no ''A/An''? 

message: "An article (abbreviated art) is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun" is not correct. Languages such as Bulgarian do have article system, but articles there are not separate words like "The", or "Das". The article in Bulgarian is a suffix added to the word which varies depending on gender and number: Мъж (man) becomes Мъжът (The man). Dahhak (talk) 22:11, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Even languages closer to English have such articles: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelandic.  The correct word, instead of word would be morpheme.  ConorBrady.ie (caint) 10:45, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article has to be a word? 

message: The information about Bulgarian is not quite accurate: Bulgarian has indefinite and definite articles, which are both postfixed (I can give   as a source, but it's in Bulgarian). So, "indefinite and postfixed definite articles" should be more appropriate, although it's not 100 % accurate, but better than "only postfixed definite articles" which means it has no indefinite articles at all! 
For example: "stol" (chair) - "stola" (a chair) - "stolat" (the chair). 84.179.22.170 (talk) 12:45, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bulgarian 

message: Please disambiguate the colors in the map. Shades of purple are very near shades of blue, and can be hard to discern. 4.154.248.67 (talk) 11:20, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fix the colors in the map 

message: reference 2 is a dead link  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.188.213.36 (talk) 08:27, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference 2 is a dead link 

message: fill in with the article
Father is a graduate and mother is __________ M.Sc. holder  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.148.62.14 (talk) 05:03, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I should say "an" in casual speech, but in writing I should be inclined to rephrase the statement in order to avoid a futile argument, e.g. "...mother has a master's degree." LynwoodF (talk) 08:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article 

message: Each language has three genders and four cases and in the singular there is a certain amount of 'similarity',  but this largely disppears in the plural (Pamour (talk) 10:40, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  greek and german article 

message: If "some" is considered a "partitive article" and "no" is considered a "negative" article, then surely "any" and "every" should also be considered some sort of article. BigSteve (talk) 11:29, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any and Every 

message: The WP article discusses the concept of plural indefinite articles and gives the English word some as an example. However, it lacks a citation supporting this definition. I marked that paragraph as needing citation. I did so because the entry for indefinite article in Oxford English Dictionary does not include plurals:
a determiner (a and an in English) that introduces a noun phrase and implies that the thing referred to is nonspecific (as in she bought me a book; government is an art; he went to a public school). Typically, the indefinite article is used to introduce new concepts into a discourse. Compare with definite article.
--Ed Brey (talk) 21:24, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plural indefinite article 

message: Classical and Modern Standard Arabic do have an indefinite article, it's the -an or -un suffix
al-sayyaara(tu) (ُالسيارة) the car ---
sayyaaratun (سيارةٌ) a car
Garudamon11 (talk) 15:40, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic indefinite article 

message: Greek lists the nominative and accusative forms of the definite articles. Should it also list the genitive forms (although not quite the same thing, French lists the partitive article)? And does οι need to be repeated for masculine and feminine, given that les in the French section is not? — 91.238.123.116 (talk) 14:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: As a separate matter, because ancient Greek is still widely read, and unlike modern Greek, it does not have an indefinite pronoun (see  foundalis.com/lan/artindef.htm for the ancient workarounds) might it be worth mentioning this, including in the Table, where those who study classical Greek, Koine Greek, etc., may notice that the Yes for the Indefinite article could misinform WP readers who don't realize there's been a change. Bob Enyart, Denver KGOV radio host  (talk) 00:12, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek section 

message: Is this article a joke or a serious one? What is the purpose to include Sindarin in this important topic? Vagr7 (talk) 23:03, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed Sindarin from the list. Itsused (talk) 05:33, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

text: Yet you do not protest the inclusion of Esperanto or Interlingua? – Dyolf87 (talk) 15:36, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sindarin, Really? 

message: The legend for the map indicates that Icelandic only has suffixed definitive articles, which is incorrect. Icelandic also has independent definitive articles, which can be used given a certain set of circumstances, and often sounds formal and/or poetic. This would be hinn (masculine) hin (feminine) and hið (neuter). To use the independent definitive article, one must insert an adjective in between the article and the noun: hinn góði maður (the good man), hin góða kona (the good woman), hið góða barn (the good child).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.213.157.254 (talk) 22:21, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding map in "Variation among languages" 

message: As far as I'm aware, an to one is just normal development; long a's usually became /ɔː/ and were often spelled o_e or oa in Middle English and this has nothing to do with dialect; for example, bāt > boat, nān > none, gāst > ghost, hāl > whole, and in this case, ān > one. Can anyone source the claim about dialects? 173.84.15.238 (talk) 18:23, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding Anglian "an" and Saxon "on" 

message: “In some languages that do have articles, like for example some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional but in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.” – Variation among languages
“Every noun must be accompanied by the article corresponding to its definiteness, and the lack of an article (considered a zero article) itself specifies a certain definiteness.” – Head paragraph 
There is probably a very serious problem with how definitions are used throughout this article. Is zero article considered an article or not? Itsused (talk) 12:21, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the sentence which says “Every noun must be accompanied by the article corresponding to its definiteness, and the lack of an article (considered a zero article) itself specifies a certain definiteness. This is in contrast to other determiners and adjectives, which are typically optional.” until someone clarifies this. Itsused (talk) 12:36, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some serious inconsistencies  

message: I was surprised that you claim that Papiamento has no indefinite article, but does have a partitive article. I understand you live in an area where the language is spoken and so I am loath to suggest that you are entirely wrong about this. However, I decided to look at some texts and found that un was being used as an indefinite article, but there was no evidence whatever of a partitive article. I then went to this translation site and asked for a translation of Please give me bread and an orange. Here is the translation I was given (unedited): fabor duná mi pan í un orañe. Would you like to comment on these points? Incidentally, I found di being used for of, but not in the context of a partitive article. LynwoodF (talk) 14:12, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now altered the entry. LynwoodF (talk) 16:28, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Papiamento 

message: In the table "Variations of articles in definiteness and inflection", the column "Numbered" distinguishes between "Yes", "No", and "Yes (if definite)". 
It lists English as "No", German as "Yes", and Dutch as "Yes (if definite)".
All three of these languages, however, use the null article for indefinite plural. Dutch and German both have numbered definite articles - English doesn't. So, if the null article for plural counts as having numbered articles, the correct labels should be: English: Yes (if indefinite), German: Yes, Dutch: Yes. If the null article doesn't count, then the correct labels should be: English: No, German: Yes (if definite), Dutch: Yes (if definite). DerManiac (talk) 08:31, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistencies regarding numbered indefinite articles 

message: The Welsh definite article is listed as "non-gendered", but considering that feminine singular nouns undergo consonant mutation after the article would suggest that this is gendered. Ci ('dog' [masc.]) is y ci ('the dog') but cath ('cat' [fem.]) becomes y gath ('the cat'), etc. – Dyolf87 (talk) 15:35, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you whole-heartedly. Even though the form of the article is unchanged, the fact that the article triggers the soft mutation in feminine singular nouns, but not in masculine nouns, amounts to gendering in my view. LynwoodF (talk) 16:08, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I have changed it so that it more accurately reflects the situation with the Welsh def. article. – Dyolf87 (talk) 08:56, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for this. I see you have linked to the article on Colloquial Welsh morphology, but the phenomenon also occurs in Literary Welsh. However, it would be awkward to try to link to the two separate pages, and so perhaps you have done the most sensible thing. LynwoodF (talk) 10:27, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Colloquial Welsh is Welsh. The Literary language is a very conservative form of the language reserved only for literary purposes and contains many features which have since been lost in the spoken language. The colloquial language is the language of everyday speech and is thus "proper Welsh" rather than the archaic, arguably pretentious, literary standard which sits somewhere between Middle Welsh and Modern Welsh. It is for this reason that I changed the link. – Dyolf87 (talk) 09:58, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a good point. I thought you might have a good reason for changing the link. LynwoodF (talk) 12:16, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

text: You are right. I found this website and in this section the case inflections are shown in detail. I will see what I can do about the table in the article. LynwoodF (talk) 15:29, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now changed the entry in the table. LynwoodF (talk) 15:41, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Excellent! Thank you very much. - 89.160.178.26 (talk) 12:51, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for spotting an error and teaching me something I didn't know. LynwoodF (talk) 16:17, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Welsh article "non-gendered"? Really? 

message: Is it really true that in enlish, the adverb "no" can be thought of as an article, like "kein" in German? When I say "no person has ever done something before", is that "no" really an article? --Bageense(disc.) 17:13, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Well "no" is certainly used as a determiner and, in constructions where it could be replaced by "not any", I think it is reasonable to call it a negative article. LynwoodF (talk) 17:43, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  No article 

message: Both of these nicknames are rooted in the perceived or imagined quality uniqueness.  To recap what I just wrote in my edit, "The Donald" implies that Trump is uniquely important among all people named Donald, while "The Gipper" suggests an imagined verb that means "to be George Gipp" and so "The Gipper" is "the one who Gipps". 
I left those examples alone, but added an example of how the grammatical rule changes if there is an adjective before the name, e.g. "*The Lionel waited..."  is ungrammatical but "The great Lionel waited..." is grammatical.
I think the Donald and Gipper examples should be removed, but I don't want to do that without offering it for discussion.
(Note: In linguistics, it is standard practice to mark ungrammatical utterances with an asterisk.)Pithecanthropus4152 (talk) 05:42, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Donald and The Gipper are not good examples. 

message: Sorry but این and آن translate as "this" and "that", i'm not sure that's the same thing as "the" in English. I think آن can also mean "it", but I still don't think that's the same. Sameerhameedy (talk) 21:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: , I don't know sufficient about the language to know whether you are right, but I notice at Persian_grammar#Articles that there is a difference between the written and spoken usage. Are those words used informally as definite articles? LynwoodF (talk) 10:44, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persian 

message: Write an article on the best day of my life  — Preceding unsigned comment added by TeeBoy123 (talk • contribs) 07:47, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  English 

message: I was born on 27/11/1995 in unguwan sarki Bulkachuwa word, katagum LGA of Bauchi state and I joined gamawa nursery school 1999, later I joined central primary school Gamawa in 2001-2007, goes to Government Science secondary school Darazo in 2007- 2010 and I also goes to General Hassan Usman Katsina Unity college Bauchi 2010-2013, obtained certificate of Computer operator from Hadakai training center Jos 2014, obtained certificate of Computer software from Google 2019, I also joined the Bauchi state university gadau 2017-2020. Goes to my NYSC in Gombe state specialist hospital Gombe in 2020-2021. I served as assistant public health officer at general hospital azare as an during my industrial attachment 2018-2019, assistant public health officer at katagum LGA secretariat department of health during my internship 2019-2020, volunteer at Red cross Nigeria gombe branch and also a public health officer at camp clinic during NYSC orientation camp at temporary orientation camp malam sidi, Gombe state 2021, assistant Environmental health officer at Gombe state specialist hospital Gombe 2021-2021,and a volunteer as community mobilizer on health and it's related at katagum LGA secretariat department of health 2021-2022. A seller and also a customer care at L.A Gbadamosi company of Nigeria gombe, Also attended a webinar on Institute of African  higher education research and innovation {IAHERI}. Which is the 1st international webinar on repositioning higher education research for institutional sustainable and development held on Saturday 20th august, 2022 at Maryam abacha university Kano. Mu'azu Uzairu Liyo (talk) 14:11, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biography  

message: Why not call them lekadoodles?  To wit, what is the etymology of the word article as used in the sense of this, rather long, ahem, article? N0w8st8s (talk) 01:36, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why are articles called articles? 

message: It doesn’t make sense to include constructed languages in the table “ Variations of articles in definiteness and inflection among major languages”. Including conlangs in typological data alongside natural languages doesn’t have scientific merit, since the factors that lead to typological features in natural language are completely different from the deliberate metalinguistic choices in designing conlangs. 
The passage afterward about constructed languages is also a largely irrelevant tangent about the history and motivations of conlangs. I think that both elements can be distilled into a single concise section about articles in constructed languages, if it’s even necessary. Edetone (talk) 05:01, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove Esperanto and Toki Pona from main typological table