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CHAT: Definite/Indefinite Article Distinction\

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Monday, September 9, 2002, 12:18
Thomas R. Wier scripsit:

> In my very brief exposure to French, I found the indefinite > use here of _des_ *far* more frequent textually than _some_ would > ever be in English texts. One would think that an article, if it > truly is such, would be relatively frequent on a textual basis.
But in French almost all NPs begin with an article or equivalent, whereas English is very free with article-less NPs. So French is no basis for judgment. In particular, "le" and friends (as I posted a while back) are moving toward becoming mere syntactic sugar, and the truly definite article is becoming "ce". -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan Assent may be registered by a signature, a handshake, or a click of a computer mouse transmitted across the invisible ether of the Internet. Formality is not a requisite; any sign, symbol or action, or even willful inaction, as long as it is unequivocally referable to the promise, may create a contract. --_Specht v. Netscape_

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Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>