Re: No pronoun, no article

Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:

> Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
>
> > If you want to
> > indicate clearly what you mean and how many, just use demonstratives
> > and/or adjectives.
>
> Is it always the case, as I suspect, that definite articles grow out of
> demonstratives, and indefinite ones out of the number "one"?  At the
> very least this device has evolved several times independently.
One of my less well-developed conlangs, Telendlest (AKA Telenzh), has an
indefinite article derived from an old definite one -  what happened was that
the old definite article came to be used to ubiquitously that speakers started
to employ the demonstrative when it was important to clearly indicate something
as definite. Then the demonstrative came to acquire an extra cliticized
numeral "one" when actually used as a demonstrative, leading to the following
shift:
.             dem   def.art indef.art
old system    ha    ez      -
new system    hadz  ha      ez

where _hadz_<_ha dza_ "this one".

IIRC, during the relevant CONLANG discussion, someone digged up an anadewism
for this.

                                                   Andreas