Re: demuan 101: articles

Fabian wrote:

> >>         sing    plur
> >> a       -       xe
> >> the     ja      yi
> >
> >Question:  why not use a singular for
> >the indefinite article also? It
> >makes just as much sense as a plural article, at least.
>
> hint: nouns don't inflect at all. The distinction is necessary in the
> article because of this. Without an article to mark plural, there would be
> no difference between 'I want a cat' and 'I want some cats'.
Yes, but I still don't see why no singular article is needed.  If you
have "I want X cat" (where X = the singular article) and "I want
Y cat" (where Y = the plural article, and where the noun is, in the
example, uninflected), then you can have even more specificity in
terms of grammatical clarity.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

There's nothing particularly wrong with the
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