Re: CHAT: Definite/Indefinite Article Distinction

Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> writes:

> Pablo Flores wrote:
> >SYV doesn't have articles, but marks definiteness on nouns
> >and adjectives using suffixes. .....
>
> That sounds awfully like enclitic'd articles. Why not call 'em that?
I may as well do that... I presume that's the origin
of the suffixes anyway. But they're not like particles
that attach to anything unchanged. Their form depends
on the root and the root interacts with them in a way
that suggests they're more like inflections. Consider

    ak 'woman', aka 'a woman', eki 'the woman'
    ka 'man', ka 'a man' (zero mark), kach 'the man'
    bibi 'new', bibiya 'a new one', bibiyi 'the new one'


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/nyh/index.html
  "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments
   of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
   No one knows the shape of that future or where it
   will take us. We know only that it is always born
   in pain."  -- G'Kar quoting G'Quon, in "Babylon 5"