13 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5574 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English*
| 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 Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| 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 Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| 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 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian
| Message 12 of 13 20 October 2009 at 5:22pm | IP Logged |
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 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6381 days ago 232 posts - 266 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Russian, German
| 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.'
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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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