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Which languages have ’the’s and ’a

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13 messages over 2 pages: 1
maaku
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 Message 9 of 13
20 October 2009 at 6:47am | IP Logged 
In German, and in some pidgen forms of English, the indefinite article takes the form of "one", as in "one of". After all, that's what the indefinite article really means. And what's more, this grammar construction exists in some form in every language on the planet (required or otherwise).
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Iversen
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 Message 10 of 13
20 October 2009 at 1:05pm | IP Logged 
You can't assume that the number and the indefinite article is the same, even though the latter is derived from the former. Normally the number will be pronounced more distinctly and with a certain amount of stress, and at least in Danish this difference can even be marked in the writing: "en mand" = a man, "én mand" = one man. But in most European languages that has an indefinite article it just looks like the number, and it is perfectly legitimate to say that the indefinite article just is a weakened and automathized version of the number one.

In the same way the definite articles (insofar they exist) are derived from demonstrative pronouns, but the weakening process has not gone equally far in all languages. In Dutch, German and the Nordic languages the prepositioned articles still ressemble their pronominal relatives, but with much less stress ("det røde hus" = the red house, "det røde hus = that red house), - even the postclitic definite article is still recognizable as a weakened demonstrative, though not the same one: ("huset" = the house, "hint hus" = "ye house"). But "hin" has almost disappeared from modern Danish, so to see a living connection you have to check out Icelandic ("húsið" vs. the pronoun "hið").
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 11 of 13
20 October 2009 at 5:14pm | IP Logged 
Maps from the World Atlas of Language Structures:
Definite articles
Indefinite articles
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Levi
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 Message 12 of 13
20 October 2009 at 5:22pm | IP Logged 
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Maps from the World Atlas of Language Structures:
Definite articles
Indefinite articles

Very cool! I thought I had seen something like them before, then I realized those maps were made by Matthew Dryer, whose typology class I took at university! It was one of my all-time favorite classes.

Edited by Levi on 20 October 2009 at 5:24pm

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Lemus
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 Message 13 of 13
21 October 2009 at 3:17am | IP Logged 
sebngwa3 wrote:
Korean and Japanese have 그 (Geu) and その(Sono) respectively, which I think is similar to 'the'. I think it's weaker than 'that' but stronger than 'the.'


Gramatically speaking, sono is a demonstrative adjective, as opposed to an article. The two are close in meaning, but still different.


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