Test 1

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, number, and case. Articles are part of
a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners,
and quantifiers. In linguistic interlinear glossing, articles are abbreviated as ART.
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.

1. Give me the book.
2. 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.[clarification
needed][1][2]

Indefinite article[edit]
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:

1. A monster ate a cookie. His name is Cookie Monster.

1. A cookie is a wonderful thing to eat.

1. A monster must have broken into my house last night and eaten all my cookies.
2. A friend of mine told me that happens frequently to people who live on Sesame
Street.
Indefinites also have predicative uses:

1. Leaving my door unlocked was a bad decision.

Proper article[edit]
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 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.[citation needed] 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 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) and Congo (Kinshasa); a move in the other direction occurred with The Gambia. 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.
If a name [has] a definite article, e.g. the Kremlin, it cannot idiomatically be used without it: we
cannot say Boris Yeltsin is in Kremlin.

— R. W. Burchfield[3]
Some languages use definite articles with personal names, as in Portuguese (a Maria, literally:
"the Maria"), Greek (η Μαρία, ο Γιώργος, ο Δούναβης, η Παρασκευή), and Catalan (la Núria,
el/en Oriol). Such usage also occurs colloquially or dialectally
in Spanish, German, French, 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, and "the Gipper", referring to former
president Ronald Reagan.[4]

Partitive article[edit]
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 French 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)."[5]

Negative article[edit]
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 German, 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[edit]
See also: Zero article in English
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 causally link zero
articles to nouns lacking a determiner.[6] 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.