Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

    This is an interesting topic... I searched thru my ConLang "Syntax" notes
and found this - written by David E. Bell:

amman iar definite determiners distinguish four levels of definiteness.

1) identifiable definite determiners : At this extreme, we have complete
identifiability of the referent.  This form may only be used when the speaker
presupposes that the hearer can uniquely identify the entity being spoken of.
 The identifiable definite determiner is also always used with nouns used to
refer to personal names, place names, clan names, historical periods, racial
groups, religions, et. al.

 i dhraug = the wolf
 in drug  = the wolves

2) definite superset determiner : Farther down the hierarchy, amman iar
distinguishes partial identifiability.  This form may only be used when the
referent of the NP has been delimited by specifying a certain set, which can
be identified.

 mina dhrug  = one of the wolves
risan drug  = some of the wolves

 This is clearly differentiated from the indefinite form.

 draug bemin = one wolf

3) relevant definite determiner : Farther down the hierarchy, amman iar
distinguishes relevant identifiability.  This form may be used to suggest
that the referent of the NP, while not immediately identifiable is important
or relevant for the discourse as a whole.   This form is often used to
introduce new information into discourse.  Once a NP has been introduced with
a relevant definite determiner, a speaker or writer may use one of the other
definite determiner forms or an appropriate pronoun to refer to this entity.

 e dhraug = the wolf
en drug   = the wolves

    If a discourse started with "aini galdran e dhraugon henniarth = Galdor
saw the wolf.", then we would expect the wolf to recur in the discourse.

4) indefinite determiner : At the bottom of the definiteness hierarchy,
identification of the referent is neither possible nor relevant.  The
indefinite determiner is the unmarked form, therefore

 megil may mean 'sword' or 'a sword' according to context.


David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
www.graywizard.net
AIM: GraWzrd
"Wisdom begins in wonder."


Hanuman Zhang, MangaLanger

     Language[s] change[s]: vowels shift, phonologies crash-&-burn, grammars
leak, morpho-syntactics implode, lexico-semantics mutate, lexicons explode,
orthographies reform, typographies blip-&-beep, slang flashes, stylistics
warp... linguistic (R)evolutions mark each-&-every quantum leap...

"Some Languages Are Crushed to Powder but Rise Again as New Ones" -

title of a chapter on pidgins and creoles, John McWhorter,
_The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language_

= ! gw3rra leg0set kaka! ! riis3rva, saIlva, riikuu, sk0pa-g0mii aen
riizijkl0! =
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