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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.

Replies

Pavel Iosad <edricson@...>
BP Jonsson <bpj@...>