Re: Spoken Thoughts ( My second, better formed, non crappy Language)

On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Herman Miller wrote:

> Or there's also the option of making different kinds of distinctions other
> than definite or indefinite in the articles if you do have them. Even
> comparing languages like English and French, the use of (or lack of) the
> articles is not directly equivalent. I've been trying to find a post I made
> a while back on an idea I had for a language that had more than two
> articles, but I don't even remember what the name of the language was.
English actually has a three way distinction: a vs. the vs. ZERO

A dog barks
The dogs bark
Dogs bark.

It would be perfectly reasonable to have an article specifically for that
last one. Spanish, French, German, and many, many others allow a definite
article to be used with a personal name, but surely that does not have the
exact meaning of a definite used with a common noun: the mere fact that
you name the entity makes it definite. So there's another one.

Or you could add other dimensions to the definite/indefinite distinction.
What about a distinction between the noun immediate to the discourse vs.
another one? For example, use separate articles to specify the difference
between "a man" vs. "a different man" and "the man" vs. "the other man".

Just a couple quick ideas.

Marcus