Re: definite/indefinite articles
From: | Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...> |
Date: | Monday, March 31, 2003, 18:57 |
Mike Ellis wrote:
>>Articles are not necessary, and many languages don't have them. Actually,
>>
>>
>I think they are quite rare. Your question reminds me of another I meant to
>ask here: are articles an Indo-European creation?
>
>They exist in non-Indo-European languages like Hawaiian, Mayan, and the
>Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic. I've seen at least one language
>that marks definiteness with a suffix, but I can't remember what that was.
>And of course there are Indo-European languages without them.
>
>M
>
>
>
I believe there's a northern russian dialect (more than a dialect, very
much drifted from the standard) which uses a suffix (or infix?) to
express definiteness which comes immediately before the noun ending
which indicates number and case.
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