Articles

Activity 9.2: Defining Articles

Discussion Question

Study the pairs of sentences and see if you can explain the difference in meaning between the sentences of each pair.  It might help to consider who is speaking and who is listening.

The Meanings of Articles

In both sets of sentences above, the first sentence refers to a nonspecific item, but in the second, the item is definite.  By definite, we mean that the item under discussion is certain, that it is known to both participants in the conversation, and they both feel sure of which item is being discussed.  In the first sentence, no such certainty exists, and there is no particular thing referred to, and of a whole range of possibilities exists, and the speaker would accept any of these possibilities as appropriate.  In essence, the item in the first sentence of each pair refers to an unknown item.

Whether a thing is known or unknown, then, forms the all important distinction between the definite article the and the indefinite article a (or an).  The table below shows how we can lay the choices out for non-native speakers of English.

Following the table, then, we can see that the indefinite article should be more frequent in English than the definite article, but according to the American National Corpus, the definite article is nearly two times more frequent than the indefinite article.  How is this possible?  In order to communicate with others, we want to make sure that they know and feel certain about what we talk about.  Speakers have ways of making the things they talk about known to their listeners.  Some of the major ways of specifying nouns are given below.

Ways that a speaker determines if a noun is known by listener:

1. It is unique in the world experienced by all humans:
1. The sun is shining.
2. The moon is full.
2. The noun is unique and obvious to both the speaker and the listener in the context
1. Pass me the salt. (referring to the salt that is right there where both can see it).
2. I need to go to the library (referring to the one that all students at this particular university go to)
3. The speaker makes the noun unique by providing enough modifiers that the word can only refer to one thing in the context.
1. Give me the last paper in the stack.
4. It was already introduced previously by the speaker
1. There is a book on the table.  The book belongs to Eldridge.
2. A giant lived alone in the woods.  One day the giant woke up to find a group of horses surrounding his house.
5. Although it wasn’t specifically mentioned previously, the new item can be assumed because of its relationship to something previously mentioned
1. I went to a concert last night.  The crowd was huge. (public events are attended by crowds.)



Activity 9.3: Explaining Articles

Find all the nouns in the following paragraph.  Then select the articles that accompany them and explain why each one is used as it is.

Click on the nouns to change the color and set to italics. Click and drag each accompanying article over the table cell at the bottom that correlates with the descriptions above. Wrong answers will stay in the table, but turn red, correct answers will snap back to the text and change to green.



One may have noticed that the words some and any have been included in the meaning section here with articles, even though these words are not considered part of the articles category.  The noun subcategory tree at the end of this chapter provides a quick reference to the ways that these words are easily wrapped together with the articles.

The main distinction lies in the difference between articles and quantifiers, and the difference is therefore related to the difference between count and noncount nouns.  The articles mark definite (known) and indefinite (unknown) singular count nouns.  The definite article also marks definite noncount nouns, but the indefinite article doesn’t mark indefinite noncount nouns.  Indefinite noncount nouns are unmarked altogether: absolutely nothing is placed in the determiner slot in front of the unknown noncount noun.  Likewise, indefinite plural count nouns also go unmarked.  No wonder ELLs never know whether to put an article in or not!

 While the articles mark definite and indefinite nouns themselves, the terms some and any refer to indefinite amounts of items.  They can be seen as indefinite counterparts to the definite numbers of the quantifiers.  Nevertheless, since there is a similarity in the reference to indefiniteness, some and any become wrapped up in the issue of what gets placed in front of a noun.  The real questions are do we know the thing itself or not, or do we know how much of the thing there is or not.  If the thing itself is unknown, use the indefinite article or the Ø article.  If the amount is unknown, use the indefinite quantifiers.

Pronouns