THE ARTICLE

Students of English will always find it helpful to consult such sources for the study of the articles in English as Oxford English Dictionary and Christophersen's monograph The Articles: a Study of Their Theory and Use.

Questions that cannot be answered one way while speaking about the articles:

1) is the article a separate part of speech (determiner)?

2)is the article a word or a morpheme (auxiliary morpheme)?

The two main views of the article are, then, these:

(1) The article is a word (possibly a separate part of speech) and the collocation "article + noun" is a phrase (if of a peculiar kind).

(2) The article is a form element in the system of the noun; it is thus a kind of morpheme, or if a word, an auxiliary word of the same kind as the auxiliary verbs. In that case the phrase "article + noun" is a morphological formation similar to the formation "auxiliary verb + .+ infinitive or participle", which is an analytical form of the verb.

3) The name "determiners" is given to closed system items, which, functioning as adjuncts, show their head-words to be nouns. Rayevska states, that the most central type of "determiner" is that to which we traditionally give the name article.

According to Blokh, article is also defined as a determining unit? But of a specific nature accompanying the noun in communicative collocation. Its special character is clearly seen against the background of determining words of half-notional semantics. Whereas the function of the determiners such as this, any, some is to explicitly interpret the referent of the noun in relation to other objects or phenomena of a like kind, the semantic purpose of the article is to specify the nounal referent, as it were, altogether unostentatiously, to define it in the most general way, without any explicitly expressed contrasts. For example, Some woman called in your absence, she didn't give her name. (I.e. a woman strange to me.)— A woman called while you were out, she left a message. (I.e. simply a woman, without a further connotation.) Another peculiarity of the article, as different from the determiners in question, is that, in the absence of a determiner, the use of the article with the noun is quite obligatory, in so far as the cases of non-use of the article are subject to no less definite rules than the use of it. Taking into consideration these peculiar features of the article, the linguist is called upon to make a sound statement about its segmental status in the system of morphology. Namely, his task is to decide whether the article is a purely auxiliary element of a special grammatical form of the noun which functions as a component of a definite morphological category, or it is a separate word, i.e. a lexical unit in the determiner word set, if of a more abstract meaning than other determiners.

1. Number and meaning of articles

There are only two material articles, the definite article the and the indefinite article a (an). The distinction thus is between, for instance, the language and a language. However, the noun language, and indeed many other nouns, are also used without any article, as in the sentence Language is a means of communication. It is obvious that the absence of the article in this sentence is in itself a means of showing that "language in general", and not any specific language (such as English, or French, etc.), is meant. Hence we may say that there are three variants: (1) the language, (2) a language, (3) language. The last one is sometimes called a 'zero article'. Theidea of a zero article takes its origin in the notion of "zero morpheme", which has been applied to in English, for instance, to the singular form of nouns (room) as distinct from the plural form with its -s-inflection. If, therefore, we were to interpret the article as a morpheme, the idea of a zero article would make no difficulty. If, on the other hand, we take the article to be a word, the idea of a "zero word" would entail some difficulty.

The article determination of the noun should be divided into two binary correlations connected with each other hierarchically.

The opposition of the higher level operates in the whole system of articles. It contrasts the definite article with the noun against the two other forms of article determination of the noun, i.e. the indefinite article and the meaningful absence of the article. In this opposition the definite article should be interpreted as the strong member by virtue of its identifying and individualising function, while the other forms of article determination should be interpreted as the weak member, i.e. the member that leaves the feature in question ("identification") unmarked.

The opposition of the lower level operates within the article subsystem that forms the weak member of the upper opposition. This opposition contrasts the two types of generalisation, i.e. the relative generalisation distinguishing its strong member (the indefinite article plus the meaningful absence of the article as its analogue with uncountable nouns and nouns in the plural) and the absolute, or "abstract" generalisation distinguishing the weak member of the opposition (the meaningful absence of the article).

The described oppositional system can be shown on the following diagram (see Fig. 1).

ARTICLE DETERMINATION

Relative Generalisation Absolute Generalisation

("Classification") ("Abstraction")

Fig. 1

The best way of demonstrating the actual oppositional value of the articles on the immediate textual material is to contrast them in syntactically equivalent conditions in pairs. Cf. the examples given below.

Identical nounal positions for the pair "the definite article — the indefinite article": The train hooted (that train). — A train hooted (some train).

Correlative nounal positions for the pair "the definite article — the absence of the article": I'm afraid the oxygen is out (our supply of oxygen). — Oxygen is necessary for life (oxygen in general, life in general).

Correlative nounal positions for the pair "the indefinite article — the absence of the article": Be careful, there is a puddle under your feet (a kind of puddle).— Be careful, there is mud on the ground (as different from clean space).

Finally, correlative nounal positions for the easily neutralised pair "the zero article of relative generalisation — the zero article of absolute generalisation": New information should be gathered on this subject (some information). — Scientific information should be gathered systematically in all fields of human knowledge (information in general).

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