14

The Article System

GRAMMATICAL DESCRIPTION

Introduction

In a survey of the teaching problems of ESL teachers working in the Los Angeles area (Covitt, 1976), the teachers reported that article usage was their number one teaching problem. If we take a quick look at the languages of the world, this survey result is not surprising Oriental languages, most Slavic languages, and most African languages, for example, do not have articles. On the other hand, languages which do have articles or article-like morphemes (e.g., French, Spanish, Persian, and the Semitic languages) often use these morphemes in ways that differ from the English article system. For example, many of these article-using languages mark the generic use of an abstract noun with their equivalent of the definite article. Thus, instead of saying Beauty is truth as the English poet Keats did, the literal equivalent of this sentence in one of these languages would be The beauty is the truth. Also, some of these languages can indicate definiteness or indefmiteness with a suffix or morpheme following the noun as opposed to the consistent prenominal position that articles have in English. Several Scandinavian languages and Persian, for example, make use of such a postnominal marker.

The picture we have been painting thus far with regard to articles is one of dissimilarity and idiosyncracy among languages. There are in fact a few universals regarding the definiteness of nouns and other morphemes that we should mention here. In all languages, proper nouns, personal pronouns, and possessive determiners are definite.

You may be wondering at this point how languages without articles can signal definiteness or indefiniteness. The most common means is word order; i.e., the noun in topic position is definite, whereas a noun in comment position tends to be indefinite.

1. In many languages discourse-based relationships such as "topic" (i.e., old information that most likely has been an item of discussion in the discourse) and "comment" (i.e., new information relevant to the topic) determine word order rather than grammatical relations such as "subject" and "object" as is the case in English. Because of their discourse function, topics tend to be definite, whereas comments tend to contain indefinite nouns.

Thompson (1978) gives us an explanation for the evolution of the English article system: she says that languages like English that use word order to signal grammatical relations such as subject and object tend to develop articles since new and old information cannot be consistently signaled through word order the way it is in topic-comment languages. Thus it is the definite and indefinite articles in languages like English that help us to identify new and old information: old information tends to be definite, while new information tends to be indefinite.

The historical development of articles in English is similar to that of most other languages which have developed an article system: the definite article is derived from the demonstrative signaling distance (i.e., that) while the indefinite article is derived from the numeral one. The latter derivation, for example, helps explain why the form of the indefinite article occurring before a word with an initial vowel sound is an; i.e., the n in an and one are historically related.

Structural facts about articles

Both structural and transformational grammarians have been largely unsuccessful with regard to explicating article usage. One reason for this is that neither school of analysis goes beyond the sentence level, and in article usage—to a great extent—we depend on the discourse context to determine what is definite and what is indefinite. What we can extract from the work of these grammarians, however, is some useful information about the classification of nouns. We know that all English nouns should be classified as either common nouns (e.g., a boy, a country, a planet) or proper nouns (e.g., Bob Robertson, Denmark, Saturn). In addition, all common nouns must be further classified as mass (e.g., water, clothing, luggage) or count (a beverage, a shirt, a suitcase) because only count nouns can have singular and/or plural forms:

Mass

*two waters; *a water

*two clothings; *a clothing

*two luggages; *a luggage

Count

two beverages; a beverage

two shirts; a shirt

two suitcases; a suitcase

Furthermore, this mass/count distinction will be shown to account for systematic differences in article usage.

Even though both the proper/common and the count/mass distinction seem to overlap in certain cases, these distinctions are useful and necessary for mastery of the English article system, which—from a structural or transformational point of view—we can summarize as follows:

Nouns
Common				Proper (are inherently definite)
	Count		Mass	sg.	pl.
	sg.	pl.
DEFINITE	the	the	the	ø	the
INDEFINITE	a/an	some/ø	some/ø

The mass-count distinction

As we mentioned above, a very important factor in correct article usage is the lexical classification of English nouns into mass vs. count. This distinction becomes problematic for many ESL/EFL learners, since although most languages make use of it, what is countable and what is mass varies from language to language. For example, information and furniture are mass nouns in English but countable nouns in French and Spanish, and chalk is a mass noun in English but a countable noun in Japanese.

Some English nouns are essentially mass (e.g., bacon) while others are essentially count (e.g., a boy). Examine the following paradigms:

MASS (a to e are ungrammatical)

a. *The bacon (a singular unit) is lying next to another one.

b. *A bacon fell onto my plate.

c. *The bacons got cold.

d. *Some bacons were in the cupboard.

e. *Bacons are for eating.

f. The bacon was too salty.

g. Some bacon was found in the cupboard.

h. Bacon is naturally salty.

COUNT (f to h are ungrammatical)

a. The boy played in the street.

b. A boy played in the street.

c. The boys played in the street.

d. Some boys played in the street.

e. Boys are made of snails and puppy-dog tails.

f. *The boy (uncountable amount) was not enough for the scout troop.

g. *Some boy made up the scout troop.

h. *Boy is made of snails and puppy-dog tails.

These paradigms are useful and help clarify the difference between mass nouns and count nouns—especially archetypical mass nouns such as bacon and archetypical count nouns such as boy. The paradigms and the terms "mass noun" and "count noun," however, suggest a strict dichotomy where there very likely is a continuum of sorts. Allan (1980), for example, applies a series of syntactic "tests" to demonstrate that the noun "car" is more countable than the noun "cattle," which has no singular form, and that the noun "mankind," which has a collective meaning, is less of a mass noun than the noun "equipment." Allan, in fact, argues for eight discrete levels of countability rather than the two we use here. However, despite our basic agreement with Allan's analysis, for pedagogical reasons, we will continue to view nouns as being either basically countable (i.e., singular, plural, collective; common, proper) or basically mass.

As an extension of our simplified two-feature analysis, we shall discuss some mass-to-count shifts² that commonly occur in English. There are, for example, some abstract mass nouns that can be made more concrete by treating them as countables (e.g., life) without a substantial difference in meaning. The rule here is that such a noun, when used with an article, denotes "an instance of the mass noun in question, and it functions as a countable noun. Other nouns in this category are beauty, truth, crime, law, education, etc. With their dual mass-count function they can be used in every slot in the paradigm:

MASS→COUNT

count	a. The life of the old man was forfeited.
	b. A life is not proper payment for that.
	c. The lives lost in the war were wasted.
	d. Some lives were saved.
	e. Lives are always lost in war.
mass	The life in the old man was fading fast.
	g. Some life could be detected in the old man.
	h. Life can be difficult at times.

2. We only elaborate on mass-to-count shifts here. The opposite shift (count→mass) is, of course, also possible:

an egg → You've got egg on your tie.

However, we emphasize mass-to-count shifts because these are more frequent than the reverse—perhaps because the countable common noun is the dominant or prototypical "noun" in English, i.e., the type of noun that attracts or assimilates other types most readily.

Other regular shifts from mass to count involving concrete nouns are those where the count noun denotes "a kind/type of as in:

MASS→COUNT

cheese a cheese cheeses

wine a wine wines

rice a rice rices

tea a tea teas

or a “unit/serving of” as in:

MASS→COUNT

coffee a coffee 3 coffees

aspirin an aspirin 2 aspirins

pastry a pastry several pastries

chocolade a chocolade some chocolades

Of course, there are also many idiosyncratic meaning relationships involving mass and count nouns that must be learned independent of any such regular semantic patterns; these are cases where there is no predictable mass → count shift, e.g.:

Mass	Count—Singular	Count—Plural
air (the atmosphere)	an air (melody)	airs (mannerisms)
glass (the silicate-based substance)	a glass (water tumbler)	glasses (spectacles)
iron (the metal)	an iron (for pressing clothes)	irons (golf clubs)

Special problems with proper nouns

Proper nouns, which include personal names, geographical names, and some other minor categories, also pose a few special problems. They are always definite, yet with the exception of a few instances (e.g., The Hague), they do not take the definite article in the singular unless the speaker is being extremely emphatic, e.g., the Mrs. Reagan (to distinguish President Reagan's wife from all other women with the same name). Plural proper names always take the definite article: the Johnsons, the Azores, etc., and are semantically collective.

3. This notion of semantic collectivity can also help explain why proper names such as the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom take the definite article without an explicit plural, i.e., union and kingdom are collective nouns.

When proper nouns are used in common noun patterns, they are no longer functioning as proper nouns—i.e., they have become common nouns by virtue of an understood common head noun (the man called George → the George). For example, all the following sentences contain proper nouns that are being used as common nouns:

The George that called yesterday called again.

A John spoke to me all night long at the party.

Some Ernests can surely be found in this crowd.

Nine Marys were on the list.

Marvins are boring.

Another common source of proper names being used as common nouns are trade names. Thus we have:

Kleenex (a trade name) → a kleenex (= a paper tissue)

Xerox (a trade name) → a xerox of something (= a photocopy)

Geographical names prefer the article-less proper noun form; in fact with the passing of time or a change of events, unique common forms of geographical names with the article the seem to move toward the use of no article. We have evidence of this tendency from two sources. First of all, a change in status from colonial territory to independent statehood or nationhood can cause the loss of a definite article and other accompanying inflections, e.g.:

Unique Common Noun	→	Proper Noun
the Sudan	→	Sudan
the Cameroons	→	Cameroon

Second, as descriptive designations for singular entities gradually become familiar to us, i.e., places we are personally familiar with or hear mentioned frequently, the definite article in the original name tends to drop off, and this results in a proper noun, (4. Historically, this has happened quite often in English.) e.g.:

Unique Common Noun	→	Proper Noun
the green park	→	Green Park
the Regent's park	→	Regent's Park
the river road		River Road
the Brookfield zoo		Brookfield Zoo

In such cases, two alternatives sometimes exist side by side (the earth—earth); one can view a geographical name such as earth as a unique common noun (i.e., with the) or as a proper name (without the).

Indeed a majority of geographical names function as proper nouns and occur without the article, as is shown in the following semantically based listing adapted from Hewson (1972):

continent: Asia, South America, Africa,...

country: Canada, France, Nigeria,...

county: Los Angeles County, Cook County,...

city: New York, London, Tokyo,... (exception: The Hague)

mountain: Mount Whitney, Mount Aetna,...

lake: Lake Michigan, Lake Baikal,... (exception: the Great Salt Lake)

island: Catalina Island, Staten Island,...

point: Point Dume, Point Mugu,...

bay: San Francisco Bay, Tampa Bay,...

cape: Cape Cod, Cape Canaveral,...

park: Yosemite National Park, Douglas Park,...

street, road, avenue, boulevard, etc.: Yale Street, Wilshire Boulevard,...

square: Trafalgar Square, Union Square,...

As was previously stated, plural and collective proper names take the definite article, and geographical names have the following plural or collective subcategories:

countries (if viewed as unions, federations): the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, the USSR,...

lakes (if they form a set): the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes,...

mountain ranges: the Rocky Mountains → the Rockies, the Andes, the Alps,...

islands (if viewed as a group): the Canary Islands → the Canaries, the Azores, the Bahamas,...

However, there are also a number of singular geographical names which function as unique common nouns (as opposed to true proper nouns) and which take the definite article. Consider the following list (5. Note the deletions of the head noun that are possible in many of these unique common nouns taking the and which we have indicated in parentheses.):

regions (6. Regions seem to be divided between those that take the article (see above) and those that do not, e.g., Appalachia, Alsace, Siberia.): the Caucasus, the Crimea, the Roussillon,...

deserts: the Sahara (desert), the Mojave (desert),...

peninsulas: the Monterey Peninsula, the Iberian Peninsula,...

oceans and seas: the Pacific (Ocean), the Mediterranean (Sea),...

gulfs: the Gulf of Mexico, the Persian Gulf,...

rivers: the Mississippi (River), the Amazon (River),...

canals: the Erie Canal, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal,...

Some of these names, according to Hewson(1972), seem to be large and hard-to-define bodies of water (e.g., oceans, seas, and gulfs—as opposed to lakes). Still others represent flowing water or strips of water used for navigation or irrigation (e.g., rivers and canals). The remaining categories are land masses or areas that are hard to define:

regions—as opposed to countries or cities (Where exactly does one region begin or end?)

deserts—as opposed to arable land (Where exactly does the desert end and the arable land begin?)

peninsulas—as opposed to islands or continents (Where exactly does the peninsula end and the mainland begin?)

While Hewson's generalization is useful, it is not perfect, since one might well wonder why oceans, seas, gulfs, and peninsulas—which are unique common names—are harder to define than bays, points, and capes—which are proper names. Perhaps size is a factor here. In any case, something such as Hewson's observation seems preferable to memorization of lists, which is the current alternative ESL/EFL teachers have for dealing with geographical names.

Article usage

Whereas the above information is a summary of what structural, transformational, and semantic analyses offer, it still doesn't begin to tell us enough about usage. It doesn't tell us, for example, when a common noun is definite or indefinite. For this aspect of article usage we have to consider the discourse context (i.e., how familiar the speaker/writer is (and thinks the listener/reader is) with the noun(s) being mentioned). Brown (1973) gives us a good way of visualizing the interaction of speaker and listener with regard to the article usage of nongeneric common nouns in English:

		Speaker (Writer) →
		specific referent	nonspecific referent
Listener (Reader)	specific referent	definite: Can I have the car?	indefinite: There's a spy hiding in your cellar. I heard you once wrote an article on X.
Listener (Reader)	nonspecific referent	indefinite: I saw a funny-looking dog today.	indefinite: I don't have a car. I need a new belt.

Thus, as Brown's matrix indicates, the definite article is used properly only when the noun discussed has a specific referent (from the speaker's point of view) for both the speaker/writer and the listener/reader.

Definite article usage

Elaborating on his matrix, Brown (1973) suggests eight circumstances under which a noun may have specific reference for the speaker and the hearer alike (i.e., where an utterance would go into the upper left quadrant of the matrix):

1. unique for all: the moon, the earth, the sun

2. unique for a given setting: the blackboard, the ceiling, the floor

3. unique for a given social group: the car, the dog, the baby, the President

4. unique by pointing, nodding, etc.: the book, the chair

5. unique because of characteristics that get attention: the explosion, the streaker

6. unique by entailment: in talking about a house: the windows, the garden, the kitchen

7. unique by definition: the house with a view, the girl who speaks Basque

8. unique by prior utterance: I saw a funny-looking dog today. The dog ...

To Brown's eight categories, we would add two more:

9. unique by a specified order or rank in a set: the last sentence on the page; the fastest runner in the heat

10. unique by anticipation: We found the hubcap of a car that must be very expensive.

Two of Brown's categories and one of ours correspond closely to concepts long used in traditional grammar. For example, category 8, unique by prior utterance, is traditionally referred to as anaphora. In other words, when a definite article plus a noun—or a pronoun, which is also a definite form—refers back to a noun previously mentioned in the discourse, we call this anaphoric reference. Category 4, unique by pointing, nodding, etc., is traditionally referred to as deixis, which means that the physical context rather than the verbal context is making the noun in question definite. Thus when the pronouns I and you are used to refer to the speaker and the hearer, respectively, we speak of deictic reference. Finally, category 10, unique by anticipation, is called cataphora in traditional grammar. In such a case, the definite article points forward in the discourse in anticipation of subsequent specific information that would justify the use of a definite form; this phenomenon is also called cataphoric reference.

7. There is, of course, a certain amount of overlap in the 10 categories listed above with respect to the traditional three (anaphora, cataphora, and deixis) in that 6 and 8 can be considered subcategories of anaphora while 2, 3, 4, and 5 all seem to have elements of deixis. Furthermore, 7, 9, and 10 can be considered examples of cataphora.

Indefinite article usage

Brown's matrix shows us that the indefinite article is used to perform a number of discourse functions:

1. To introduce a noun to the listener that is specific for the speaker but not the listener, e.g.:

I saw a funny-looking dog today. (i.e., lower left quadrant of the matrix)

2. To show that the noun does not have a specific referent for either the speaker or the listener, e.g.:

I need a new belt (lower right quadrant of the matrix)

3. To refer to a noun that is nonspecific for the speaker but which is assumed to be specific for the listener; i.e., the speaker guesses, or pretends to guess, e.g.:

FBI man to homeowner: Don't be coy. We know there's a spy hiding in your cellar.	i.e., the upper right quadrant of the matrix
Barbara Walters to King Hussein: I understand you've made a proposal to the Israelis concerning the West Bank.

Potential ambiguity of the indefinite article

Note that the indefinite article—especially in object position—may be ambiguous as to whether it modifies a noun that is specific or nonspecific for the speaker. A later reference in the discourse to such an indefinite noun can help disambiguate.

I needed a book	but I didn't have one.	indefinite noun substitutes (i.e., the noun has nonspecific reference)
I needed a book	but I didn't have it.	definite personal pronouns (i.e., the noun has specific reference)
I was looking for some books	but I didn't find any.	indefinite noun substitutes (i.e., the noun has nonspecific reference)
I was looking for some books	but I didn't find them.	definite personal pronouns (i.e., the noun has specific reference)

As the above examples show, only nonspecific, indefinite some undergoes some → any suppletion in negative sentences.

The indefinite article with predicate nominals

Neither the structural classification nor Brown's matrix includes mention of predicate nominals, i.e., nouns that typically follow the verb BE and that identify or classify the subject noun.

This is a pencil. John is a teacher.

All the indefinite noun phrases in the structural classification or Brown's matrix can be made plural and can be preceded by some (some funny-looking dogs, some belts, some spies)