Re: articles
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, January 30, 2005, 19:20 |
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On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 01:42:20PM -0500, Doug Dee wrote:
> According to _Definiteness_ by Christopher Lyons (Cambridge U. Press, 1999),
Such a clunky word. I think we should call it something else,
linguistic convention be damned. Maybe "definity".
:)
> In large region of the Mddle East and Central Asia, definiteness is
> generally marked only on direct objects. Definiteness marking is
> almost absent in Australia and South America.
I assume you mean the native languages thereof, since definity marking
is alive and well in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. ;-)
Now, such marking makes logical sense to me; I can understand why it
would be innovated. But *in*definity marking, like English "a(n)", I don't
grok at all. Virtually every use of the indefinite article can
be replaced by either nothing or the number "one" without changing the
meaning. So how did the indefinite article develop? And what did it
develop from?
-Marcos
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