6. The article

1. The status of the article in English.

2. The number of articles in Modern English.

3. The meaning of the article and its functions.

1. The status of the article in English

The article presents one of the most complicated problems of language structure. Although a great number of philologists have treated the article both in English and in other languages, there are still a lot of problems connected with the article that are not yet solved and are under discussion.

Among the debatable issues arising in connection with the article a number of theoretical questions can be put:

1. What is the article? Is it a word or a morpheme?

2. If the article is a word, then what part of speech is it?

3. How many articles are there in English?

4. What are the main meanings and the main functions of the article and, thus, what is the categorial meaning of the article?

Before starting the discussion on the first problem in the list given above it is worth revising the definition of a morpheme. Usually the morpheme is defined as the smallest meaningful unit into which a word may be divided. E.g., if we take the form actors it can be divided into three morphemes: act- expressing the basic lexical meaning of the word; -or- expressing the idea of an agent performing the action indicated by the root of the word; -s indicating number, i.e. showing that more than one person of the type indicated is meant.

There are two points of view on the problem whether the article is a word or a morpheme. According to the first view, the article is treated as a morpheme, while according to the second point of view it is a separate word. The adherents of the former approach – and these are mainly foreign linguists (e.g. R.W. Zandvoort, Paul Christophersen who in 1939 published the book entitled “The Articles: A Study of Their Theory and Use in English”, Copenhagen) – tend to interpret the article as a form element in the system of the noun. Consequently P. Christophersen distinguishes three forms of the noun: zero-form, a-form, and the-form. In this interpretation the article resembles auxiliary verbs that are used to build analytical forms of the verb, like the category of tense, mood, voice, etc.

Table 1. English articles according to P. Christophersen

	Singular	Plural
Zero-form	Cake	Cakes
A-form	A cake	------
The-form	The cake	The cakes

The adherents of the first approach (within which the article is ascribed the status of a morpheme) try to prove their point of view giving the following arguments: first of all they claim that the article is a morphological sign of the noun, it signals the forth-coming noun and, besides, it does not possess its own lexical meaning; correspondingly the article can be treated as a morpheme.

A representative of Leningrad school of linguistics, Prof. L. Zinder, developed this theory in Russian linguistics. He treated the article as an auxiliary word similar to auxiliary verbs. In this case the phrase “article + noun” becomes a morphological formation similar to the formation “auxiliary verb + infinitive/ participle” which is an analytical form of the verb (such as shall go or has gone, etc.). Prof. I.B. Khlebnikova also supports this view. She claims that articles “present distributional characteristics of the English noun, a purely grammatical element and not a taxonomic class with a wide range of inclusion” [Хлебникова 2001: 22]. V.Y. Plotkin also considers the combination “article + noun” (e.g. an egg) an analytical form [Плоткин 1989: 32].

These arguments are put forward by those linguists who interpret the article as a form element in the system of the noun and who believe that it forms a certain grammatical category of the noun, which is identified in different ways by different authors (as the category of definiteness, or reference, or determination, etc.). The opponents of this interpretation of the article give their arguments against the approach described above and try to prove in their turn that the article must be treated as a separate word, that it should not be identified either with the auxiliary word of an analytical form or with a morpheme.

The proponents of the second approach who treat the article as a separate word give the following arguments to prove their point of view: first of all they hold that in spite of the fact that the article is a morphological sign of the noun, it does not form an inseparable unit with the noun, and this feature distinguishes it from the analytical form of the verb (e.g. a thoroughly studied matter, a very interesting book). The article is a noun determiner in the first place, i.e. between the article and the noun there exists a certain syntactic connection.

Another argument against the interpretation of the article as a morpheme is the following: the article can be easily substituted for by the pronouns: the definite article by the demonstrative pronoun this/that, and the indefinite article by the pronoun some. In an analytical form the auxiliary verb cannot be substituted for by any other word.

Still another argument is that though the article does not have its own lexical meaning, it nevertheless possesses its own grammatical meaning, which proves its status as a separate word but not a morpheme. Besides in spite of its close semantic and syntactic connection with the noun, the article possesses all the features characteristic of a separate word, the most important of which is the possibility to occupy distant positions as related to the noun, e.g. “And then came the heavy rain”, or “a thoroughly studied matter”. On the basis of the arguments given above the adherents of the second approach prove that the article should be treated as a separate word, but not a morpheme or an element of an analytical form, similar to analytical forms of the verb. The second theory is supported by the majority of Russian and Soviet linguists.

It’s worth mentioning though that there are also attempts to combine the two approaches. For instance N.M. Rayevska identifies the English article as a special function word that is used as a clear-cut marker of the noun. “Lexically empty itself, it determines the “noun-ness” of the head-word and contributes to its meaning as a noun” Rayevska 1967: 89.

Thus, provided the article is a separate word, the question arises what part of speech it is. Opinions differ in this respect as well. For instance, grammarians who represent Classical Scientific English Grammar included articles either in the class of pronouns or in the class of adjectives. E. Kruizinga, for one, studied the indefinite article within the class of indefinite pronouns, while the definite article was referred to the class of demonstrative pronouns. O. Jespersen and H. Sweet also treated the article in the class of pronouns. G.O. Curme called the article a pronoun adjective, in other words he classed the article among adjectives. The remnants of this approach can be even traced in modern grammars. For instance, in the New St. Martin’s Handbook by A. Lunsford and R. Connors (copyright 1999) intended for teachers and students of writing, articles are classed among identifying adjectives. The ground for that is the definition of adjectives as modifying or limiting nouns and pronouns, usually by describing, identifying, or quantifying those words [Lunsford, Connors 1999: 143] Among foreign linguists there were some who thought it reasonable to describe the article as a separate part of speech, e.g. H. Poutsma. He believed the article forms a part of speech on its own.

In Soviet and Russian linguistic tradition the article is treated as a separate part of speech. Russian linguists give arguments against describing the article as an adjective as well as a pronoun. As far as the meaning of the article and the adjective is concerned it should be pointed out that unlike adjectives that have a lexical meaning of their own as they express different qualities of an object (e.g. wonderful, red, tall, etc.), the article does not express any quality. As for the syntactic features of the article and the adjective, they also vary. The difference is as follows: adjectives may be used as attributes and predicatives, while articles cannot be used predicatively. Besides, adjectives may be modified by adverbs (e.g. very interesting, extremely hard, rather tiresome, etc.) while the article cannot be modified by adverbs. Morphologically adjectives can form the degrees of comparison, whereas the article does not have this category.

The reasons mentioned above make it easy to separate the article from the adjective, and correspondingly it proves the fact that articles should not be included into the class of adjectives.

It’s much more difficult to differentiate articles from pronouns as they have a lot in common. First, from the point of view of their meaning the articles are very much like pronouns, their meanings are indefinite.

E.g. I saw a man at the corner. = I saw some man at the corner.

I saw the man somewhere else. = I saw this man somewhere else.

But still the meaning of the pronoun is more distinct than that of the article. Cf.: some girl – a girl.

The meaning of the article is very weak, and this weakening may be considered as an argument against identifying the article as a pronoun. Though this does not sound very convincing, nevertheless it is against uniting articles and pronouns.

From the syntactic point of view it’s hardly possible to differentiate between articles and pronouns. They coincide in modifying nouns, e.g. a man, some man, the man, this man, and at the same time neither of them can be modified by other words.

From the morphological point of view there exists some difference between the pronouns and the articles in their grammatical categories. Thus, the pronouns this / that have the corresponding plural forms these/ those. As for the definite article the, it has no plural form, though it may be used with nouns in the plural, e.g. the students, the teachers, etc.

The indefinite pronoun some has the corresponding analogue in the plural, i.e. the pronoun many, while the indefinite article a does not have the corresponding analogue in the plural or cannot be used with the noun in the plural form. This illustrates the difference in the grammatical category of number in the system of pronouns on the one hand and in the system of the article on the other.

The arguments given above prove the fact that we cannot identify articles with pronouns in spite of the fact that they have much in common. The fact that these two classes of words differ determine their separate treatment as different classes of words, i.e. different parts of speech.

As for classing the article within the noun itself (as it is done in the R. Zandvoort classification) Russian linguists criticize this point of view as well. They admit the fact that the article is a determining unit of specific nature accompanying the noun, that it is a morphological sign of the noun which signals the coming noun, and that is the function of the article in the system of language. But, still, the vast difference in the nature and the grammatical categories of the noun on the one hand and the article on the other hand, makes it impossible to classify the article within the noun.

Thus, most Russian grammarians (B.A. Ilyish, I.P. Ivanova, B.S. Khaimovich & B.J. Rogovskaya, N.A. Kobrina, E.A. Korneyeva, etc.) are of the opinion that the article is a separate part of speech, namely a formal part of speech. The article is considered a formal part of speech as it is characterized by its own semantic, syntactic and morphological functions, but does not have any lexical meaning of its own. This approach to the problem of the article seems to be the most reasonable, though it’s worth mentioning that the article by its nature represents a marginal (intermediary) phenomenon that cannot be classed either in the sphere of morphology or syntax. It is dual by its nature, because on the one hand the article is the marker of the noun as a part of speech, which brings it closer to the morpheme, and on the other hand it is a separate word, a functional word because it does not have its own independent syntactic function. This feature brings the article closer to the sphere of syntax. This interpretation of the article is based on the dialectic approach to the analysis of linguistic phenomena. No wonder in D. Crystal’s Linguistic Encyclopedia the article is described as one of the aspects of a noun phrase structure Crystal 1995: 223. In Modern English grammars articles are treated as determiners. Determiners are function words which are used to specify the reference of a noun Longman Grammar 2000: 258, or in other words they “narrow down the reference of a noun” Longman Grammar 2000: 69. Besides articles, among determiners we can find demonstrative determiners (this/ that book), possessive determiners (my/ your/ her book), quantifiers (some book, many books, etc.) But Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics emphasizes that articles are different from all the other determiners for two reasons. Firstly, they cannot form phrases on their own. Secondly, the distinction they mark is obligatory. Delete, for example the in I am looking for the girls, the object girls is then specifically indefinite Matthews 1997: 26.