The categorial meaning and the functions of the article

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].

2. The number of articles in English

Provided the article is ascribed the part of speech status, linguists face the problem of the number of articles in English. This question can have three answers in theoretical English grammar.

According to the first approach there are two articles in English: the definite (the) and the indefinite (a/ an) as there are two material manifestations of the article system in English. But linguists paid attention to those cases when the article can be omitted and this absence of the article is meaningful.

Cf.: English is a Germanic language.

The language of this writer is very complicated.

Language is a means of communication.

Hence, we can state that there are three possible variants: (1) a language, (2) the language, (3) language. Now the question arises, how this third variant should be treated. The older grammatical tradition described it as “omission of the article”, which is obviously inadequate, since there is not the slightest reason to believe that the article in such cases was ever “omitted”.

Another view is that this case should be described as “the absence of the article”, and sometimes this notion is made more precise and the phenomenon is called “meaningful absence of the article”. According to practical grammars of English the omission of the article here has the generic function. This enables linguists to arrive at the conclusion that the meaningful absence of the article is an article in itself. That makes the number of articles in English equal to three.

Thus the very absence of the article is a special kind of article. And it is called the “zero article”. According to this view, then, there would be three articles in English: the definite, the indefinite and the zero article. This idea of the zero article takes its origin in the notion of a zero morpheme, which has been applied to certain forms, namely, those having no ending, and in this way differing from other forms of the same word (cf. in Russian: руки – рук). The notion of the zero-morpheme can also be applied in English. If, therefore, we were to interpret the article as a morpheme, the idea of a zero-article would present no difficulty. But since the conclusion was made that an article is a separate word, we would be supposed to speak of a zero-word, i.e. a word having no material exponent, which makes no sense and contradicts the basic principles of materialistic approach to the analysis of language. Indeed, ‘zero-words” can hardly be analyzed because that would mean that we are analyzing nothing. That does not sound convincing.

Prof. M.Y. Blokh suggests a compromise of an approach. He thinks that the article paradigm, which presents the category of article determination, consists of three grammatical forms: the definite, the indefinite and the zero form. The paradigm demonstrates asymmetry connected with various cases like singularia tantum, pluralia tantum: Ø progress – a kind of progress, some progress – the progress, Ø news – an item of news – the news, etc. The first opposition is between the definite article and either the indefinite or zero form. The non-marked member is then divided into relative generalization (the indefinite form and zero form) and absolute generalization (zero-form). Thus, the article is built into the nounal system, which besides the categories of number and case, distinguishes also the category of determination [Блох 1983: 82-85].

The next approach to the article is the acknowledgement of four articles – the definite, the indefinite, zero and partitive. According to this theory there also exists a partitive article in English which is represented by the pronoun some. This theory has a lot of opponents who give the following arguments against the recognition of the partitive article. The pronoun some even in such word-combinations as some bread is an element of a pronoun system, it only acquired some special use in speech. The pronoun some cannot be regarded as an article because it has its own meaning. Word combinations of the type some bread and the like illustrate the use of notional parts of speech in the function of form words.

Nowadays the most convincing theory as far as the number of articles is concerned is the theory of the two articles (L.S. Barkhudarov, I.P. Ivanova, V.D. Arakin, B.S. Khaimovich & B.J. Rogovskaya) – the definite article and the indefinite article – that represent a certain class of form words. Nevertheless, the idea of a zero article has its staunch proponents and is also made use of, for example, it is employed in Cambridge Grammar of English (2007).

There are several attempts at identifying the grammatical meaning of the article. This problem is quite a vexed one due to the abstract meaning of the article.

As is known the definite article the has the following semes:

1) The individualizing seme (сема индивидуализации), that enables the speaker to single an object out of the class of similar objects: Let’s go to the drawing room. The boy wants to clear the table.

2) The unique seme (сема уникальности) that signifies that the object is unique: the sun, the moon, the sky.

3) The identifying seme (сема указательности) which is similar to the same seme of demonstrative pronouns: I saw the man we discussed last night.

4) The generalizing seme (сема обобщения) which makes it possible to represent an object as a generalized designation of all the objects of the same class: The horse is a domestic animal.

The indefinite article a/an conveys the following meanings:

1) The classifying seme (сема классификации) which refers an object to some class: a dog = any dog.

2) The singularity seme (сема единичности) expresses that a noun with the indefinite article is thought of in the singular [Аракин 2000: 118].

This combination of meanings and the absence of strict opposition in meanings conveyed make it extremely difficult for grammarians to single out the categorial meaning of the article and give the name to this category.

One of the first attempts in this respect belongs to O. Jespersen. He describes the grammatical meaning of the article as the meaning of definiteness / indefiniteness. The former is conveyed by the definite article and the latter – by the indefinite article. This theory is connected with the origin of the article. The Russian linguist V.D. Arakin also defines the category expressed by the English article as that of definiteness/ indefiniteness. But there are some cases when this theory does not help.

E.g. I am a teacher. I have a father – according to the logic of this theory the definite article should be used.

Some other Soviet linguists undertook another attempt. According to this approach the basic grammatical meaning of the article is identified as the meaning of singularity or plurality. The former meaning is conveyed by the indefinite article, the latter, the meaning of plurality, is expressed by the definite article.

E.g. I’m a student – the meaning of singularity is expressed as the article refers the noun to the whole class.

The student told me … - here some concrete, particular meaning is conveyed, here we don’t have the plurality opposition.

This theory explains one of the possible realizations of the meaning of the article, but this is not the widest meaning of the article.

The third attempt belongs to the American linguist Z. Harris. He is of the opinion that the meaning of the article is the meaning of familiarity or not familiarity to the speaker or hearer. B.A. Ilyish expresses the same point of view. This variant of interpretation of the meaning of the article is connected with the theory of functional sentence perspective. For example, B.A. Ilyish connects the meaning and the function of the indefinite article with the rheme of the sentence and the indefinite article – with the theme of a sentence. The rheme is associated with some new information, while the theme is associated with the information already known to the reader or listener.

E.g. The door opened and a young girl (new information) came in.

The door opened and the young girl (theme) came in.

But this theory is also open to criticism because it does not explain all the cases of article use when, for example, the indefinite article conveys some aspective meaning, or when some object was not mentioned before but is thought of as something known (one of the belles letters techniques) or cases like: The great Russian poet Pushkin …, but A sportsman Smith…

Another theory (M.A. Ganshina and N.M. Vasilevskaya) provides another explanation: the indefinite article refers a certain thing to a similar class of things. In this case the object is represented as one among other objects of a certain class. This meaning of the indefinite article is called classifying and the function is labeled as a classifying article.

As far as the definite article is concerned it singles a thing or a person out of a certain class. This is called an individualizing article according to M.A. Ganshina and N.M. Vasilevskaya. This theory is very close to the approach taken by the outstanding Russian linguists L.S. Barkhudarov, I.P. Ivanova, S.D. Katsnelson who assert that the article performs the referent function as it refers an object to some situation or does not do that. So the article is a source of situational information. It actualizes the notion expressed by the noun in accordance with the given situation. The article reflects the speaker’s understanding of the given situation.

Another theory explaining the meaning of the article presents the indefinite article as expressing the nominating function: it gives a name to a thing or person. The definite article has some demonstrative force and is closely connected with its origin. The above-mentioned demonstrative meaning of the article is very close to the so-called individualizing meaning and function. This theory explains such cases as I am a teacher. He is a father (the nominating function of the article).

V.V. Gurevich states that the article expresses the category of definiteness – indefiniteness – generalization. He believes that the role of the article is, first of all, to attach the meaning of singularity /plurality and then make generalizations or neutralize them about the object meant. Thus, the category of definiteness – indefiniteness – generalization is primarily based on the quantitative characteristics. Indefiniteness presupposes “one / several elements of the class, i.e. not all the members of the class (I saw a dog / dogs in the yard = dog / some dogs). Definiteness renders information about one or several objects that are singled out of the class according to some principle. If the meaning of generalization is expressed (Dogs are domestic animals; The dog is a domestic animal) then the opposition of definiteness /indefiniteness disappears. As far as the referent function is concerned, V.V. Gurevich points out that a combination of a noun with any determiner always performs the referent function. A word does not refer to anything when it is devoid of any determiner as given in the dictionary [Гуревич 2003: 18, 20].

According to M.Y. Blokh, the grammatical meaning of the article consists in the overcoming of the opposition between the general meaning of the noun and the particular form of its realization. This definition embraces all the three types of article use: the definite, the indefinite and the zero-form.

The syntactic function of the article is identified as the function of closing (замыкание). The article marks the left hand boundary of noun-groups. In some grammar books the article is described as having two functions. Firstly, it serves as a determiner and a noun determiner to that. The article serves as a signal of a forth-coming noun. Russian linguists are of the opinion that the article is a peculiar determiner different from all others as the article determines only the noun, whereas the others have other functions as well.

The second morphological function of the article is the function of substantivization. The article, namely the definite article serves as a signal of substantivization when an adjective or a participle is substantivized, e.g.: the rich, the old, the wounded.

Ø Recommended literature:

1. Блох М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка: Учеб. пособие / М.Я. Блох, Т.Н. Семенова, С.В. Тимофеева. – М.: Высшая школа, 2004. – С. 112-113.

2. Блох М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 2008. – С. 83-95.

3. Ильиш Б.А. Строй современного английского языка. – Л.: Просвещение, 1971. – С. 49-57.

4. Кобрина Н.А. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка: Учебное пособие / Н.А. Кобрина, Н.Н. Болдырев, А.А. Худяков. – М.: Высшая школа, 2007. – С. 42-60.

5. Хаймович Б.С., Роговская Б.И. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1967. – С. 214-217.

Ø Supplementary literature:

1. Гуревич В.В. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. Сравнительная типология английского и русского языков. – М.: Флинта: Наука, 2003. – С. 12-21.

2. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1981. – С. 98.

3. Смирницкий А.И. Морфология английского языка. – М.: Издательство литературы на иностранных языках, 1959. – С. 380-387.

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