A
Hello this is version three of
What's "THE"? Why do we have and use a definite article in English? Ours doesn't even mark gender as definite articles do in other languages yet it is one of the ten mostly frequently used words in the English language. Its main use often seems to be emphatic - it shows points and draws attention to a particular object. Look at the difference between these two statements.
I saw a book that you wanted.
I saw the book you wanted.
The first statement only gives us general information. What if the person being spoken to wanted more than one book? I saw a book or one book that you wanted does not give us as much information as I saw THE book you wanted. The second statement tells us it was one special object whereas the first only shows us there was an object. So THE doesn't only emphasize - it also limits the focus of the statement to the specific object. “The” points to one thing.
A Quick look at a contrasting article form:
A and An, our Indefinite articles, came from a word meaning One in Old English just as any comes from its adverb form - anig. This usage is also found in other languages like French. Un and Une come from the Latin word for One - Unus. There is a similar pattern of usage and evolution has in many other Romance and Germanic languages. Our definite article, THE, however came from an Old English demonstrative article - SE (original Nominative form) which also had definitive and emphatic functions.
So what's the difference? Remember Indefinite Articles are General and Definite Articles Specific in English. Their function is semantic referring to the categories of meaning of General and Specific.
I have one book you needed.
Note that which one of several books though is still not known.?
I have a book you needed. We still do not know which one of the books?
I have the book you needed. See the difference?
That book you needed is over there. This is the book you needed.
Our modern definite article is (usually according to the Oxford and other dictionaries) pronounced in “Standard English” š plus e or a neutral schwa vowel before a consonant or ši before a vowel. Some speakers of dialects and “Creoles” and people who have English as a second language and whose native languages lack fricatives tend to change to this to a de or te.
The evolved from an older demonstrative form in Old English which had a complete declension of cases and genders given in the THENESS survey linked to this article. (If readers request it I will add a table to this article in version 4).
The article as a written word in Modern English has a similar function or usage to the habit of underlining text in a book or using an exclamation mark to show stress placed on a spoken word. The use of punctuation however developed later than pronunciation. Writing and printing has leads to the development of signs that do not signify sound or grammar in many languages. Using the definite article in speech or other media marks the difference between any one general object and one special particular object. It limits and focuses meaning!
The word definite comes from Latin definitus and its verb definio - to set a limit or mark a boundary (Finis - end) with the edge being that of a semantic field - an area of meaning associated with a word or phrase. Article comes from Latin articulus and artuus - finger, joint or node. The “finger” points to the limit of meaning.
Definite articles are now classified as being in the word class named Determiners (abbreviation DET) by Linguists. Determiners, as function words, mark titles, names, semantic classes, and in some languages, the use of a noun as a classifier, or a change of an adjective to a noun and sometimes of a infinitive verb form or a verbal noun to a nominal form. As a class they include definite articles and definite object markers along with the noun classifiers used in many African languages, the Bantu group probably being the best known (KiSwahili) example. Several Asian languages also use classifiers: Vietnamese, Thai, and Malay, along with various Chinese dialects, which suggests an areal typological change, probably originating in the Sinitic group (the “Chinese” Sino-Tibetan languages) and hence spreading across S.E. Asia. However it should be noted that it is just as likely that the use of classifiers could be a characteristic of some SE Asian proto-language that is no longer extant which spread into Proto Tai and Proto-Sino-Tibetan and later into Malay and Vietnamese? Though the lack of classifiers to my limited knowledge in other Austronesian and Austric languages suggests to me that the first explanation is more likely?
What's Special and Unique about the Definite Article?
The Definite Article in English is unusual in that it marks limits and not gender or number. It is also a free rather than a bound morph and used before nouns and adjectives. It distinguishes the specific, particular, and individual from the general and abstract and universal, the one from the many.
Which other languages have Definite Articles or Markers of Definiteness?
Most of them are Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic. (N.B. the abbreviations I.E. and A&A will be used in the rest of this article for these two language families and that A&A corresponds to the older term Hamitic-Semitic.) The few that are not, Basque/Euskara, and Finnish (Suomi) and Hungarian (Magyar) from the Uralic family, are used in the European language area. The majority use a marker or morph that often also functions as a demonstrative article or pronoun and is pre or postpositional. Interestingly the Uralic languages and others use ergative constructions in which what an IE user would regard as the Subject as an UNmarked absolutive while other cases are marked. They are described as having focus markers. There are forms with similar functions in many Austronesian and other languages. Focus particles and Object markers which seem to be derived from the K-T pattern will also be discussed in the survey.
Note:
Determiner: Formed from the verb determine which comes from Latin determino derived from a compound of de + terminus limit end boundary Cognate to Greek Terma.
Prepositional: Used as a prefix or pronoun added before a word
Postpositional: Used as a suffix or particle added after a word
For further details please visit my General Survey which details examples and usages from various world languages. Need to return to the Home Page of this site? You can Email Me