Re: articles

From:    Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
> "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> writes:
> > 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.
In fact, there are a few languages which mark *only* indefiniteness.
In many Mayan languages, for example.  These are rare, though.
I don't know what their etymology is.

> > So how did the indefinite article develop?  And what did it
> > develop from?
>
> Simply from 'one' I suppose.  In German, there's no difference.
Indeed.  Though there are superficially similar words in English
which do not historically go back to OE _a:n_, as in 'once a day'
(< OE _on daege_ 'on (the) day').  There are also some constructions
such as the comparative _the more the better_ where the second "the"
goes back to an instrumental case "the" in OE, while the first is
nominative.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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