Consider, for instance, the case of "indefinite generics." When "indefinite generics" are defined according to formal criteria and understood as a term referring to noun phrases that contain an
indefinite article and, as such, receive a generic interpretation (of whatever kind), cross-linguistic investigations very soon lead to the result that many languages do not have "indefinite generics" quite simply because they do not possess an
indefinite article, let alone one which could occur in generic contexts.
Table 2:
Indefinite Articles in Titus Andronicus Scene A AN Per cent AN 1.1(*) 38 2 5.000 2.1(*) 14 0 0.000 2.2(*) 4 0 0.000 2.3 39 5 11.364 2.4 11 2 15.385 3.1 30 7 18.919 3.2 10 1 9.091 4.1(*) 8 0 0.000 4.2 28 1 3.448 4.3 14 2 12.500 4.4 8 1 11.111 5.1 26 3 10.345 5.2 26 1 3.704 5.3 13 2 13.333 Data are drawn form Marvin Spevack's Shakespeare concordance.
The
indefinite article thus has a pragmatic-discourse function different from specificity, in terms of establishing links between parts of the discourse and marking novel topics of the discourse (see Heusinger 2002a).
As is the case in the great majority of languages that have
indefinite articles, the
indefinite article in English derives from the numeral one.
In most cases it represents the
indefinite article 'a' (e.g., occurring 189 times out of 227 instances in the 67 letters written by WLC, see example 39).
Certain determiners, particularly the definite and
indefinite articles, cause students considerable difficulty not only because of the opacity of the rules of usage but also because native-English-speaking readers are rather intolerant of their misuse.
The last kind of argument that can be proposed in favor of a formal [def] feature in non-Semitic languages is one based on environments where definite and
indefinite articles or clitics produce different word orders.
She traces the development of the definite and the
indefinite articles in English, and finds that a usage-based cognitive constructionalist approach seems to provide the most promising account of when, how, and why the articles emerged.
Jordanian undergraduates EFL student's errors in the use of the
indefinite articles. Asian EFL Journal, 7.
Meanwhile,
indefinite articles also play their roles.
As seen in Table 1 below, misuse of noun pluralization, of quantifier and noun agreement, and of
indefinite articles appear as subheadings under grammatical interference; and omission, addition, and misformation of prepositions are the subheadings under prepositional interference.
Correct production of the definite and the
indefinite articles CLIL NON-CLIL T-test p-value (9) Mean SD Mean SD Definite 98.24 2.77 71.94 26.02 3.177 0.011 * Indefinite 73.72 19.40 26.74 26.70 4.029 0.001 ** As for syntactic complexity measures, we examined the production of simple and complex sentences as well as the variety of tenses used.
For example, on page 54, Nash describes an alternation between the definite and
indefinite articles (dar and ar) in place names as following a phonological assimilation rule of dar > ar/C_ when following a preposition.
The goal of the discussion is to show that the indefinite determiners in Slavic languages, as exemplified on Croatian, could be regarded as
indefinite articles. A final overview of the conclusions set out on the basis of the proposed analysis is given in the last part of the paper.
