Re: CHAT: Definite/Indefinite Article Distinction

Tom Wier wrote:

> This is, IIRC, precisely the opposite of what I heard from
> *my* professor, Jerald Sadock:  most languages with indefinite
> articles have definites, but not the other way around.  He
> could of course be entirely wrong, so I'd be interested to
> see what you find.
D'oh! Hehe. That's what I meant. (And I'm supposed to be
a Mensan... :P  ). The occurrence of an indefinite article
implies the occurrence of a definite article. If INDEF then
DEF, so to speak.

Anyway. My point was that the number of languages that have
an indefinite article is probably lower than languages that
have a definite article (as the implicational universal above
implies). So if a language has a DEF then it most likely has
an INDEF. That means that if the number of languages with DEF
is 8%, then that figure isn't likely to be higher if we include
the INDEF-langs, since it's probably the same languages that
have the INDEF. If you see what I mean (I'm not even sure that
*I* see what I mean... :)

||| daniel

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