Re: articles

Mark J. Reed wrote at 2005-01-30 14:20:03 (-0500)
 > 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".
 > :)
 >

I have a strong personal feeling that "definacy"* ought to be a
possible formation with that sense, but Google only finds 33
instances, most misspellings of "deficiency".

 >
 > > 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?
 >

Interestingly enough, there are some languages with an indefinite
article but no definite (although the reverse is more common).

Amele, a Madang language of Papua New Guinea:

 | dana oso   ija na  sigin heje    on
 | man  INDEF 1SG GEN knife illicit take.3SG.REMOTE.PAST
 | 'a man stole my knife'
 |
 | dana ho-i-a
 | man  come-3SG-PAST.TODAY
 | 'the man came'

from
http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/DryerNPStructure.pdf


* Or possibly "definicy".  That gets more Ghits, but again, most of them are
  errors.

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