Hello here's TheNess - a Survey of Definite Markers... please feel free to email me with suggestions for improvements reformatting references extra samples ... there's an email link at the end and I know the conclusion will need to be refined and reworked for the next version!

"THENESS" - A SURVEY
A GENERAL SURVEY OF DEFINITE MARKERS and ARTICLES - PRE AND POST

INDO-EUROPEAN

N.B. Some Satem languages use postpositional markers that usually also function as demonstratives.

INDO-IRANIAN

Iranian and Indic languages while not marking the nominative often have a definite object marker as part of an ergative construction. Farsi marks the indefinite in two ways, firstly by adding i at the end of words and secondly ( a more colloquial usage ) by adding the the Farsi word for one BEFORE a noun. Farsi also has a Postpositional Direct Object Marker - ra used AFTER a word or phrase with colloquial forms - ro or -o.

Kurdish has a Definite - aka - and Indefinite - eek- Postpositional Marker.
A man is pyaweek THE man is pyawaka BR> Pashto uses a postpositional - ra marker (from - t as in Hausa for the same radical as that in modern Farsi from an Old Iranian preposition? radin concerning about ) to mark a definite direct object.

Ossetic Tajik Baluchi?

Sanskrit has a demonstrative sa, sa, tat but no emphatic or definite marker. Many Modern Indic languages do have a direct definite obect makrer that also markes the dative.

Hindi has a postpositional marker - ko with a definite function used with direct objects. Other languages follow a similar pattern. Bengali has a - ke postposition, Sindhi -khe, Oriya - ku.

The usage in Greek is wider than that of English.
IN Homeric Greek the forms that are now the Definite Article ? - /hoo/, ?- /hee/, t? /to/ (the modern sounds are o, I, and to) also had demonstrative and relative functions. The Indefinite forms and Secondary forms of the Articles seem to have developed from I.E. *T. There is a related final emphatic particle - de. In the Attic dialect of Greek that is the basis for Classical Greek the Article can be used with the Infinitive and Other Nominals to create abstracts like "to eidenai" . It is also used with proper names and demonstrative pronouns, and unlike English, declined to mark classes, case, and gender. We would say Horses are used for riding. An ancient Greek would say THE Horses or instead of saying Mankind or Humanity would say HOO anthroopos.

Armenian
There are two dialects of Armenian Western and Eastern. The Western dialect uses a suffix pattern of NOun plus MA for Indefinite and th Eastern MI - a prefix plus the Noun so that A MAN is mardma and mi mard.
Tun is house and the markers in both dialects seem to be Tuna - the house with plurla tuner - houses and tunera the houses. Some words add A so that ner means Towns and Ner the towns. Polysyllabic words liek gini - wine take - IN . Ginin - THE wine.



BALTIC - Info needed please???
Lithuanian - none? Find demonstrative?

SLAVIC or SLAVONIC Rare and postpostional where they occur.

Bulgarian uses a suffix -at or -a with a Plural - te marker.
Grad - city Gradat - THE city Cities - gradove THE Cities - Gradovete.
Macedonian: Kniga-ta - the book Kniga-va this book here

GERMANIC

Gothic (the oldest recorded dialect of Germanic had demonstratives in sa so and thata. Later developments created definite markers in all Germanic languages.

OHG had der diu daz. MLG, LG and Dutch follow a de dat pattern and Modern German der die das.

Old Frisian thi thiu thaet. Old English and Saxon - se thaet etc

(Readers would you like to see a full table of the OE forms in the next version?)
These markers were originally primarily emphatic and deictic.

The change and expansion or reduction to a definite function seems to have occurred sometime before the eleventh century A.D. since in the 12th century Alexander Neckham commented on the particularity of the English French, Greek and Hebrew languages having a definite article whereas Latin did not. Other Romance and Germanic texts also show a shifting towards a definite function from earlier demonstratives about this time.

North Germanic / Scandic / Nordic

N.B. Old Norse - sa so that. Modern languages in this group nearly all follow a similar pattern.

Indefinite is "free and pre" Definite forms are "Bound and Post". Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish also use a pattern in noun phrases of Definite Article - Adjective - Noun,

Norwegian - Modern Bokmal

Norwegian marks nouns without Adjectives with a Definite Suffix.
EN bil = A car but Bil-EN is THE Car.
There is also a Noun Phrase pattern used with Adjectives.

Definite Article + Adjective + Noun + Suffix
DEN Store Bil-EN - The big car.
Definite markes are also used to mark Titles Idioms and Superlatives. DE gode tider = the goood times whereas in English we would usually just say good times. Another example - Den rette tro - the true facts.

Indefinite Definite

Masculine En - en En Bil A car Bilen THE Car
Feminine Ei or EN - a Ei Ku A cow Kua THE Cow
Neuter Et - et Et hus A House Huset THE House

N.B. The plural ending is - ene or -ne.
En ting = A Thing but Ting = things. Tinge is the THE Thing. Tingene = THE things.

With Adjectives
DEN store bilen is the big car. Cow is "feminine" so Den store kua is the big cow. DET store huset is a big house and the Plural would be DE store bilene kuene or husene.
N.B> Do not use the Definite Article with the Adjectives for Half or Whole or in Prepositional Phrases.

Danish

Swedish

Indefinite is marked by en or ett as a free article and Definite is marked by a BOUND Morph - en or -et.En Hast = A Horse BUT Hasten is the THE Horse Likeswise En Katt and Katten is a cat and the cat. A Table is Ett bord and THE Table Bordet. The Definite ending is used with Abstract Nouns - Time Flies - Tiden gar - Tid = Time. Another example is Konsten ar lang, livet ar kort. Art-konst is long, life-liv is short. Swedish also uses a Definite marker where English would use a Possessive. He put his hand in his pocket is Hand stoppade handen i fickan. The Definite is always used after the verbs vara - be and bli - become - never the Indefinite Article.

Icelandic

ROMANCE

Latin used a demonstrative, illa, ille that later evolved into definite articles in the Romance languages: la / le. Romance marks gender as well. As in the Germanic groups the Indefinite Article usually derives from a form analogous to Latin word for one - UNUS.

Spanish: el la Plural los, las.
Portugese, o and a with Pl. os and as
Galician, Catalan ?
Old French Mas.Nom. Li, Accs lo, le and Fem. La. Plurals li, les.
French: le la l' and les for the Plural. French also has Partitive and Indefinite Articles.
Provencal: le lo la and Pl. li, los, las.?
Italian: il lo la l' with Plural gli or i.

Romanian unusually uses a postpositional marker (Slavic influence) derived from ille. A son is un fiu but the son is fiul.

CELTIC

Gaelic, Irish and Scots, uses an, a,' a n + t for the neuter
Welsh - y, Breton Cornish Manx? Similar?

AFRO-ASIATIC (previously called Semitic)

This family shows a variety of forms and usages, pre and post that can be traced back to a general K - Masculine, T - Feminine pattern. Those languages using -wa or other forms for the masculine may reflect an possible older Nostratic lost* /kwa/- form with /k/ changing to /ha/ to zero or to /wa? Or /u/? K to H changes are not unkown in IndoEuropean and would explain why Greek has h forms in the Nominative and T- forms elsewhere?

Ancient Egyptian used a prefix of P' masculine and T' feminine that seems to have had a dual relative and definitive function. (P < K ?similar to the process that changed Greek relatives from I.E. k forms to a PO radical?)The feminine - T was also used in the final position to mark gender and there was a double emphatic pattern of T+word+T. This may have occurred in other Semitic languages no long extant since the Berber dialects double mark feminine forms of nouns. A male Cat is imishshu but the female cat is Timishshut.

Modern Coptic uses the p and t prefixs as definte markers.
Masculine p - p.roome THE man
Feminine t - Ti.polis THe town or te.physis "Nature"
(possibly reinforced by the Greek fem. article?)
N - marks both Neuter and the Plural
N.roome THE Men and N.halate THE Birds.
The Indefinite is makred by the numeral ONe - "ou" with plurla Hen or on.

Hebrew has a HA article
Aramaic has a postpositional - a
Arabic - " ?al"
The L assimilates to other consonants - hence As- ad- et,.

ETHIOPIC

This group includes Ge'ez, Tigrinya and Amharic and uses postpositional markers.
Masculine + u and feminine + wa with plurals of +itu and itwa.

CUSHITIC the neighbouring language group, which includes Afar, Beja, Felasha, Sidamo and Iraqw, has markers in Somali and Oromo.

Somali uses *K for masculine and *T for feminine as postpositional morphs. Ka is the the ONE (Masculine) and Ta the one (feminine
THE man is nin+ka and THE woman - naag+ta.
K/T change to other sounds depending on the following Vowels and Consonants. Somali also has a K demonstrative.

Oromo marks nominatives with a -n and the Masculine Demonstrative with a /X/ prefix that could be related to the K/T pattern (/k/ > /x/)since it also uses a feminine nominative - thi marker - /t/ > /th/?

CHADIC

HAUSA marks the feminine with -r (from -t) and Masculine with -n (like Oromo!) it has an feminine pronoun ita.

Non I-E Languages

IN EUROPE>

The BASQUE Isolate also known as Euskara marks the Definite with +a and its Plural with +g/k (subject marker used with transitive verbs) so that in the absolute Cat is Katu and THE Cat katua and THE Cats - katuak.

URALIC

Uralic languages tend towards having ergative constructions that use a object marker for focus with a function that includes what we think of as definite marking while leaving the subject unmarked.

Finnish: The Nominative Case equals and includes a Definite function and the Partitive includes the Indefinite function as part of its semantic field.
Vesi juoksee - the water is running
Vetta juoksee - there is water running
Juon Vetta - I drink water
Juon veden - I will drink the water

Hungarian has a definite object with transitive verbs - a or az.
Olvas-om a level-et I read the letter
Olvas-ok egy level-et I read a letter
Mordvin has Indefinite, Definite singular and Definite Plural.
Kudo-s- - in a house, Kudo-so-nt - in the house, Kudo-t-ne-sa in the houses.
Other Eastern Uralic languages have a marker that indicates definiteness and also the 2nd/3rd person possessive.

Non A&A African Languages

Akan marks the demosnstrative with (e) ha 0 this here and ho - that there?
Part of the same pattern?

South East Asia

Austronesian

A couple of Western Austronesian languages have definite markers. This may be due to the influence of the Indian merchants who introduced Hinduism and Buddhism to SE Asia.
BASA BALI is a language related to Malay and Indonesian which has many Sanskrit loan words. It marks the / his / her/ and its and the poseessive by a final marker of (n)e or nya . Bungan padma is lotus flower BUT Bangane padma is THE lo\tus flower. E is added if the word is consonant final and - ne if vowel final so meme mother becoems memene - the mother . Another construction is to add i before a word dealing with a PERSON . i bapa the father i guru the teacher . There is also a final -kVowel topic marker that could be related to the - k markers in Hindi and Bengali?

Is the Definite Article a Result of AREAL transfer?

It occurs mainly in the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic groups of languages, in geographic terms, in Europe and around the Mediterranean with outliers in Northern Africa and Western Asia . Most African and Asian languages (where they do) use noun class markers - classifiers instead. Most of the languages either use a final -K marker or a T marker which develops into a D or an L in some languages (Arabic and Latin)

An earlier determiner, probably postpositional, which seems to included demonstrative, emphative, and definite functions within its semantic field seems to be the source of various later forms. This form may be *Nostratic, which would explain the parallels in I.E. and A&A. which both evolved from this hypothetical older language. The ancestral form was perhaps * kwa or *koowa. Further processes of reduction and splitting changed k to h or w. The T marker may have evolved independently as an emphatic feminine that later merged with the *Kwa pattern or there may have been a *kwta form that split into two markers? There is also the possibility more remotely that some underlying language in a Mesolithic or Neolithic European languae "Old European"? had a final -a(Consonant) marker that merged with and reinforced I.E. forms. There seems to been a continuous process of reduction that created the modern article forms that have a specific definite only function.

I hope this article has served to illustrate the complexity underlying seemingly simple every day words and that language is a process of continual change following patterns. Please send me any corrections or additions or references for the next version!

Need to return to the Home Page of this site?



I apologize for any messy bits and bad links.
Please let me know of errors I missed? Especially if you're someone who uses English as a second language could you let me know if there's any thing in particular you need more of? Samples of general usages? etc?
Click Email Me

Please come back soon and visit me. Samples to extend the survey section are very welcome!

---

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws