Re: No pronoun, no article

En réponse à John 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.
It seems to be common indeed. The case of Sardinian "so" from Latin "ipse": 
"same", shows that other roads are possible, but the deictic way seems to 
be preferred. As for the evolution of indefinite singular articles from the 
number "one", it seems indeed extremely common. Although I don't know how 
common it is, examples like Basque which, in the indefinite declension 
(which is numberless), often uses the numeral "bat": "one" to specify that 
the indefinite entity is unique, to the point that it nearly (but not yet! 
:)) ) becomes an indefinite article, are numerous enough that there must be 
some universal tendency here. Although I'd be interested to know whether 
there are languages which developed an indefinite article from another 
source than the numeral 1.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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