Re: articles

On Sunday, January 30, 2005, at 06:01 , J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:07:07 -0500, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...>
> wrote:
>
>> I'd like to know if there are only some places in the worlds where
>> languages possess articles and also if the majority does or doesn't use
>> articles
>>
>> I searched and all languages I found wich have one or two articles are IE
>> or are situated near of some IE languages
>
> The older IE languages didn't use articles either (Latin, old Germanic).
> And
> I think Slavic languages don't have them either, but I don't know for
> sure.
Bulgarian and the related Macedonian have a post-posited definite article
- but AFAIK no other Slav languages have developed them. IIRC neither
modern Persian nor Hindi/Urdu have articles nor AFAIK any of the other
Indic languages.

While articles are found in IE languages, they are by no means common to
all IE langs.

The definite articles of the Semitic languages like Arabic & Hebrew are
not related to IE, nor is the Basque definite article.

> I don't know how common they are in the world's languages,
Nor I.

Hungarian, a Finno-Ugric languages, possesses both definite and indefinite
article. This may be, as Maxime suggests, due to influence of neighboring
IE languages (tho its Slav neighbors have not developed them). But
articles also occur in Polynesian languages, and these have nothing to do
with IE langs. For example:

Maori: te hoiho = "the horse" ~ he hoiho = "a horse"

Samoan: 'o le fae = "the house" ~ 'o se fale = "a house"

Ray
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