Re: CHAT: Definite/Indefinite Article Distinction

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
>En réponse à Joe <joe@...>:
>
> >
> > In that case, english has 3 articles 'a/an', 'the' and 'some'.
> >
>
>Not really. 'Some' isn't as much used as the articles 'a/an' and 'the', and
>certainly not comparable to the frequency of use of the partitive article
>in
>French. But it's true that it's quite comparable to a plural version of
>'a/an',
>and we are taught in France that it works like French plural article 'des'
>or
>the partitive article, just not used as often.
Don't "some" indicate a fairly small number of whatever one's talking about?
It does to this L2 speaker, at any rate ...

If so, it's a paucal indefinite article, if an article at all.

                                                        Andreas

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