An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" are articles, which combine with nouns to form noun phrases. Articles typically specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase, but in many languages, they carry additional grammatical information such as

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ...

, and

case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...

. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include

demonstratives Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...

, possessive determiners, and quantifiers. In linguistic

interlinear glossing In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (annotation), gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another l ...

, articles are

abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

as .

Types

Definite article

A definite article is an article that marks a definite noun phrase. Definite articles such as English '' the'' are used to refer to a particular member of a group. It may be something that the speaker has already mentioned or it may be otherwise something uniquely specified. For example, Sentence 1 uses the definite article and thus expresses a request for a particular book. In contrast, Sentence 2 uses an indefinite article and thus conveys that the speaker would be satisfied with any book. # Give me ''the'' book. # Give me ''a'' book. The definite article can also be used in English to indicate a specific class among other classes: : ''The cabbage white butterfly lays its eggs on members of the'' Brassica ''genus.'' However, recent developments show that definite articles are morphological elements linked to certain noun types due to lexicalization. Under this point of view, definiteness does not play a role in the selection of a definite article more than the lexical entry attached to the article.

Indefinite article

An indefinite article is an article that marks an indefinite noun phrase. Indefinite articles are those such as English "some" or "a", which do not refer to a specific identifiable entity. Indefinites are commonly used to introduce a new discourse referent which can be referred back to in subsequent discussion: # A monster ate a cookie. His name is Cookie Monster. Indefinites can also be used to generalize over entities who have some property in common: # A cookie is a wonderful thing to eat. Indefinites can also be used to refer to specific entities whose precise identity is unknown or unimportant. # A monster must have broken into my house last night and eaten all my cookies. # A friend of mine told me that happens frequently to people who live on Sesame Street. Indefinites also have predicative uses: # Leaving my door unlocked was a bad decision. Indefinite noun phrases are widely studied within linguistics, in particular because of their ability to take exceptional scope.

Proper article

A proper article indicates that its noun is proper, and refers to a unique entity. It may be the name of a person, the name of a place, the name of a planet, etc. The

Māori language Māori (), or ('the Māori language'), also known as ('the language'), is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of mainland New Zealand. Closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, an ...

has the proper article ''a'', which is used for personal nouns; so, "a Pita" means "Peter". In Māori, when the personal nouns have the definite or indefinite article as an important part of it, both articles are present; for example, the phrase "a Te Rauparaha", which contains both the proper article ''a'' and the definite article ''Te'' refers to the person name Te Rauparaha. The definite article is sometimes also used with proper names, which are already specified by definition (there ''is'' just one of them). For example: ''the Amazon, the Hebrides''. In these cases, the definite article may be considered superfluous. Its presence can be accounted for by the assumption that they are shorthand for a longer phrase in which the name is a specifier, i.e. ''the Amazon River'', ''the Hebridean Islands''. Where the nouns in such longer phrases cannot be omitted, the definite article is universally kept: ''the United States'', ''the People's Republic of China''. This distinction can sometimes become a political matter: the former usage ''the Ukraine'' stressed the word's Russian meaning of "borderlands"; as

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian invas ...

became a fully independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it requested that formal mentions of its name omit the article. Similar shifts in usage have occurred in the names of Sudan and both

Congo (Brazzaville) The Republic of the Congo (french: République du Congo, ln, Republíki ya Kongó), also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country located in the western coast of Central Africa to the w ...

and

Congo (Kinshasa) The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

; a move in the other direction occurred with

The Gambia The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 c ...

. In certain languages, such as French and Italian, definite articles are used with all or most names of countries: ''la France/le Canada/l'Allemagne, l'Italia/la Spagna/il Brasile''. Some languages use definite articles with

personal name A personal name, or full name, in onomastic terminology also known as prosoponym (from Ancient Greek πρόσωπον / ''prósōpon'' - person, and ὄνομα / ''onoma'' - name), is the set of names by which an individual person is know ...

s, as in Portuguese (''a Maria'', literally: "the Maria"),

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

(η Μαρία, ο Γιώργος, ο Δούναβης, η Παρασκευή), and

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid ...

(la Núria, el/en Oriol). Such usage also occurs colloquially or dialectally in Spanish,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, Italian and other languages. In Hungarian, the colloquial use of definite articles with personal names, though widespread, is considered to be a Germanism. The definite article sometimes appears in American English nicknames such as "the Donald", referring to former president

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of ...

, and "the Gipper", referring to former president Ronald Reagan.

Partitive article

A partitive article is a type of article, sometimes viewed as a type of indefinite article, used with a mass noun such as ''water'', to indicate a non-specific quantity of it. Partitive articles are a class of determiner; they are used in

and Italian in addition to definite and indefinite articles. (In Finnish and Estonian, the partitive is indicated by inflection.) The nearest equivalent in English is ''some'', although it is classified as a determiner, and English uses it less than French uses ''de''. : French: ''Veux-tu du café ?'' : ''Do you want (some) coffee?'' :For more information, see the article on the French partitive article. Haida has a partitive article (suffixed ''-gyaa'') referring to "part of something or... to one or more objects of a given group or category," e.g., ''tluugyaa uu hal tlaahlaang'' "he is making a boat (a member of the category of boats)."

Negative article

A negative article specifies ''none'' of its noun, and can thus be regarded as neither definite nor indefinite. On the other hand, some consider such a word to be a simple determiner rather than an article. In English, this function is fulfilled by ''no'', which can appear before a singular or plural noun: : ''No man has been on this island.'' : ''No dogs are allowed here.'' : ''No one is in the room.'' In

, the negative article is, among other variations, ''kein'', in opposition to the indefinite article ''ein''. :''Ein Hund'' – a dog :''Kein Hund'' – no dog The equivalent in Dutch is ''geen'': : ''een hond'' – a dog : ''geen hond'' – no dog

Zero article

The zero article is the absence of an article. In languages having a definite article, the lack of an article specifically indicates that the noun is indefinite. Linguists interested in

X-bar theory In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In: R. Jacobs and P. Rosenbaum (eds.) ...

causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner. In English, the zero article rather than the indefinite is used with plurals and mass nouns, although the word "some" can be used as an indefinite plural article. : ''Visitors end up walking in mud.''

Crosslinguistic variation

Articles are found in many

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...

(only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic l ...

(including

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...

(incl. Finnic and Saami languages),

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesia ...

, Hindi-Urdu,

Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...

, Tamil, the

Baltic languages The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 4.5 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. Together with the Slavic lan ...

, the majority of

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto ...

, the

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. T ...

(incl.

Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language official in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa * Swahili culture Swahili culture is the culture of ...

). In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases. Linguists believe the common ancestor of the

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

, did not have articles. Most of the languages in this family do not have definite or indefinite articles: there is no article in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

, nor in some modern Indo-European languages, such as the families of

(except for Bulgarian and

Macedonian Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia. Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to: People Modern * Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North M ...

, which are rather distinctive among the Slavic languages in their grammar, and some Northern Russian dialects),

and many

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, Pa ...

. Although Classical

had a definite article (which has survived into

Modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...

and which bears strong functional resemblance to the German definite article, which it is related to), the earlier

Homeric Greek Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic Greek, Ionic, with some Aeolic Greek, Aeolic forms, a few ...

used this article largely as a pronoun or demonstrative, whereas the earliest known form of Greek known as

Mycenaean Greek Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece (16th to 12th centuries BC), before the hypothesised Dorian invasion, often cited as the '' terminus ad quem'' for the ...

did not have any articles. Articles developed independently in several language families. Not all languages have both definite and indefinite articles, and some languages have different types of definite and indefinite articles to distinguish finer shades of meaning: for example,

and Italian have a partitive article used for indefinite mass nouns, whereas Colognian has two distinct sets of definite articles indicating focus and uniqueness, and

uses definite articles in a demonstrative sense, with a tripartite distinction (proximal, medial, distal) based on distance from the speaker or interlocutor. The words ''this'' and ''that'' (and their plurals, ''these'' and ''those'') can be understood in English as, ultimately, forms of the definite article ''the'' (whose declension in Old English included ''thaes'', an ancestral form of this/that and these/those). In many languages, the form of the article may vary according to the

, or

of its noun. In some languages the article may be the only indication of the case. Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old versus new information, such as topic–comment constructions.

Tables

The following examples show articles which are always suffixed to the noun: * Albanian: ''zog'', a bird; ''zogu'', the bird *

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...

: שלם (shalam), peace; שלמא (shalma), the peace ** Note: Aramaic is written from right to left, so an

Aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These let ...

is added to the end of the word. ם becomes מ when it is not the final letter. *

Assamese Assamese may refer to: * Assamese people, a socio-ethnolinguistic identity of north-eastern India * People of Assam, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious people of Assam * Assamese language, one of the easternmost Indo-Aryan language ...

: "কিতাপ (kitap)", book; "কিতাপখন (kitapkhôn)" : "The book" * Bengali: "Bôi", book; "Bôiti/Bôita/Bôikhana" : "The Book" * Bulgarian: стол ''stol'', chair; столът ''stolǎt'', the chair (

subject Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...

); стола ''stola'', the chair ( object) * Danish: ''hus'', house; ''huset'', the house; if there is an adjective: ''det gamle hus'', the old house * Icelandic: ''hestur'', horse; ''hesturinn'', the horse *

: стол ''stol'', chair; столот ''stolot'', the chair; столов ''stolov'', this chair; столон ''stolon'', that chair * Persian: ''sib'', apple. (The Persian language does not have definite articles. It has one indefinite article 'yek' that means one. In Persian if a noun is not indefinite, it is a definite noun. "Sib e' man، means my apple. Here 'e' is like 'of' in English; an so literally "Sib e man" means the apple of mine.) * Romanian: ''drum'', road; ''drum''u''l'', the road (the article is just "l", "u" is a "connection

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

" ro, vocală de legătură) *

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

and Norwegian: ''hus'', house; ''huset'', the house; if there is an adjective: ''det gamle (N)/gamla (S) huset'', the old house Examples of prefixed definite articles: * he, ילד, transcribed as ''yeled'', a boy; , transcribed as , the boy * mt, ktieb, a book; , the book; mt, għotja, a donation; , the donation; mt, ċavetta, a key; , the key; mt, dar, a house; , the house; mt, nemla, an ant; , the ant; mt, ras, a head; , the head; mt, sodda, a bed; , the bed; mt, tuffieħa, an apple; , the apple; mt, xahar, a month; , the month; mt, zunnarija, a carrot; , the carrot; mt, żmien, a time; , the time A different way, limited to the definite article, is used by Latvian and

Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other Jew ...

. The noun does not change but the adjective can be defined or undefined. In Latvian: ''galds'', a table / the table; ''balts galds'', a white table; ''baltais galds'', the white table. In Lithuanian: ''stalas'', a table / the table; ''baltas stalas'', a white table; ''baltasis stalas'', the white table. Languages in the above table written in ''italics'' are constructed languages and are not natural, that is to say that they have been purposefully invented by an individual (or group of individuals) with some purpose in mind. They do, however, all belong to language families themselves.

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

is derived from European languages and therefore all of its roots are found in

and cognates can be found in real-world languages like French, German, Italian and English.

Interlingua Interlingua (; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It ranks among the most widely used IALs and is ...

is also based on European languages but with its main source being that of Italic descendant languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, with German and Russian being secondary sources, with words from further afield (but internationally known and often borrowed) contributing to the language's vocabulary (such as words taken from Japanese, Arabic and Finnish). The result is a supposedly easy-to-learn language for the world. As well as these "auxiliary" languages the list contains two more:

Quenya Quenya ()Tolkien wrote in his "Outline of Phonology" (in '' Parma Eldalamberon'' 19, p. 74) dedicated to the phonology of Quenya: is "a sound as in English ''new''". In Quenya is a combination of consonants, ibidem., p. 81. is a constructed l ...

and

Sindarin Sindarin is one of the fictional languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for use in his fantasy stories set in Arda, primarily in Middle-earth. Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the Elves. The word is a Quenya word. Called in ...

; these two languages were created by Professor Tolkien and used in his fictional works. They are not based on any real-world language family (as are Esperanto and Interlingua), but do share a common history with roots in Common Eldarin.

Tokelauan

When using a definite article in

Tokelauan language Tokelauan is a Polynesian language spoken in Tokelau and on Swains Island (or Olohega) in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan and other Polynesian languages. Tokelauan has a co-official status with Engli ...

, unlike in some languages like English, if the speaker is speaking of an item, they need not have referred to it previously as long as the item is specific. This is also true when it comes to the reference of a specific person. So, although the definite article used to describe a noun in the Tokelauan language is ''te'', it can also translate to the indefinite article in languages that requires the item being spoken of to have been referenced prior. When translating to English, ''te'' could translate to the English definite article ''the'', or it could also translate to the English indefinite article ''a''. An example of how the definite article ''te'' can be used as an interchangeable definite or indefinite article in the Tokelauan language would be the sentence “''Kua hau te tino''”. In the English language, this could be translated as “A man has arrived” or “The man has arrived” where using ''te'' as the article in this sentence can represent any man or a particular man. The word ''he'', which is the indefinite article in Tokelauan, is used to describe ‘any such item’, and is encountered most often with negatives and interrogatives. An example of the use of ''he'' as an indefinite article is “''Vili ake oi k'aumai he toki'' ”, where ‘''he toki'' ’ mean ‘an axe’. The use of ''he'' and ''te'' in Tokelauan are reserved for when describing a singular noun. However, when describing a plural noun, different articles are used. For plural definite nouns, rather than ''te'', the article ''nā'' is used. ‘''Vili ake oi k'aumai nā nofoa''’ in Tokelauan would translate to “Do run and bring me the chairs” in English. There are some special cases in which instead of using ''nā'', plural definite nouns have no article before them. The absence of an article is represented by ''0''. One way that it is usually used is if a large amount or a specific class of things are being described. Occasionally, such as if one was describing an entire class of things in a nonspecific fashion, the singular definite noun ''te'' would is used. In English, ‘''Ko te povi e kai mutia''’ means “Cows eat grass”. Because this is a general statement about cows, ''te'' is used instead of ''nā''. The ''ko'' serves as a preposition to the “''te''” The article ''ni'' is used for describing a plural indefinite noun. ‘''E i ei ni tuhi?''’ translates to “Are there any books?”

Historical development

Articles often develop by specialization of

adjectives In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...

or determiners. Their development is often a sign of languages becoming more analytic instead of

synthetic Synthetic things are composed of multiple parts, often with the implication that they are artificial. In particular, 'synthetic' may refer to: Science * Synthetic chemical or compound, produced by the process of chemical synthesis * Synthetic o ...

, perhaps combined with the loss of

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

as in English, Romance languages, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Torlakian. Joseph Greenberg in Universals of Human Language describes "the cycle of the definite article": Definite articles (Stage I) evolve from demonstratives, and in turn can become generic articles (Stage II) that may be used in both definite and indefinite contexts, and later merely noun markers (Stage III) that are part of nouns other than proper names and more recent borrowings. Eventually articles may evolve anew from demonstratives.

Definite articles

Definite articles typically arise from demonstratives meaning ''that''. For example, the definite articles in most

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...

—e.g., ''el'', ''il'', ''le'', ''la'', ''lo'' — derive from the

demonstratives ''ille'' (masculine), ''illa'' (feminine) and ''illud'' (neuter). The English definite article '' the'', written ''þe'' in

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

, derives from an Old English demonstrative, which, according to

, was written ''se'' (masculine), ''seo'' (feminine) (''þe'' and ''þeo'' in the Northumbrian dialect), or ''þæt'' (neuter). The neuter form ''þæt'' also gave rise to the modern demonstrative ''that''. The ''ye'' occasionally seen in pseudo-archaic usage such as " Ye Olde Englishe Tea Shoppe" is actually a form of ''þe'', where the letter thorn (''þ'') came to be written as a ''y''. Multiple demonstratives can give rise to multiple definite articles.

, for example, in which the articles are suffixed, has ''столот'' (''stolot''), the chair; ''столов'' (''stolov''), this chair; and ''столон'' (''stolon''), that chair. These derive from the

Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the Attested language, unattested, linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately ...

demonstratives '' *tъ'' "this, that", '' *ovъ'' "this here" and '' *onъ'' "that over there, yonder" respectively. Colognian prepositions articles such as in ''dat Auto'', or ''et Auto'', the car; the first being specifically selected, focused, newly introduced, while the latter is not selected, unfocused, already known, general, or generic. Standard Basque distinguishes between proximal and distal definite articles in the plural (dialectally, a proximal singular and an additional medial grade may also be present). The Basque distal form (with infix ''-a-'', etymologically a suffixed and phonetically reduced form of the distal demonstrative ''har-/hai-'') functions as the default definite article, whereas the proximal form (with infix ''-o-'', derived from the proximal demonstrative ''hau-/hon-'') is marked and indicates some kind of (spatial or otherwise) close relationship between the speaker and the referent (e.g., it may imply that the speaker is included in the referent): ''etxeak'' ("the houses") vs. ''etxeok'' ("these houses

f ours F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. Hi ...

), ''euskaldunak'' ("the Basque speakers") vs. ''euskaldunok'' ("we, the Basque speakers"). Speakers of

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Suret ( syr, ܣܘܪܝܬ) ( �su:rɪtʰor �su:rɪθ, also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by ethnic Assyrians, including those identifying as religious groups rather than ethn ...

, a

modern Aramaic language The Neo-Aramaic or Modern Aramaic languages are varieties of Aramaic that evolved during the late medieval and early modern periods, and continue to the present day as vernacular (spoken) languages of modern Aramaic-speaking communities. Within ...

that lacks a definite article, may at times use demonstratives ''aha'' and ''aya'' (feminine) or ''awa'' (masculine) – which translate to "this" and " that", respectively – to give the sense of "the".Solomon, Zomaya S. (1997). ''Functional and other exotic sentences in Assyrian Aramaic'', Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, XI/2:44-69.

Indefinite articles

Indefinite articles typically arise from adjectives meaning ''one''. For example, the indefinite articles in the

—e.g., ''un'', ''una'', ''une''—derive from the

adjective ''unus''. Partitive articles, however, derive from

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...

''de illo'', meaning ''(some) of the''. The English indefinite article '' an'' is derived from the same root as ''one''. The ''-n'' came to be dropped before consonants, giving rise to the shortened form ''a''. The existence of both forms has led to many cases of juncture loss, for example transforming the original ''a napron'' into the modern ''an apron''. The Persian indefinite article is ''yek'', meaning one.

References

External links

"The Definite Article, 'The': The Most Frequently Used Word in World's Englishes"
* {{Authority control Grammar Parts of speech