Re: CHAT: Definite/Indefinite Article Distinction

Indonesian makes some interesting distinctions.
'itu' lit. 'that' serves as a definite marker.  The bare noun in indefinite

rumah baru 'a new house'
rumah itu 'the/that new house'; rumah baru itu 'the/that new house'
Nouns can also be made definite with -nya, the 3d pers. poss. marker.,
usually when referring to something already established in the discourse--
rumahnya, baru 'the house is new' (topic/comment sentence) (it can also
mean, of course, 'his/her/their house is new')

Buginese has a definite marker -e; a definite DO requires a different verb
construction (suggestive of ergative in appearance):

mitaka? bola 'I see a house' (probably also 'I see houses')
m-ita-ka?   bola
pfx-see-1/subj. house

mitai bola 'he sees a house'
....-i 3/subj.

uitai bolae 'I see the house'
u- ita - i  bola-e  where u- is now 1s/subj, -i is 3/obj.

naitai bolae 'he sees the house'
na-  3/subj. -i 3/obj.

Note also naitaka? 'he sees me' na-ita-ka?

Possessed nouns are definite :
uitai bolana 'I see his/her house'
naitai bolana 'he sees his/her house' (he and his are not coreferential)

Interesting that the subject marking prefixes are clearly related to the
possessive suffix forms of the pronouns-- -ku my, -mu your, -na his/her;
similarly for the plurals, but I forget the forms........

There are also deictics-- -ero 'that', -ewe 'this' (the latter actually e
plus e, the -w- is a hiatus avoidance feature in the rare cases of identical
vowels.  Cf. m@lli 'to buy', m@lliwi 'he buys'.   The prestige dialect
has -a? '1/subj', so in that dial. one would say mitawa? bola.  The -ka?
form apparently reflects influence from closely related Makassarese.