Delahunty and Garvey
Exercise
- Which wh-word cannot introduce relative clauses in standard Eng-
lish? - Create three sentences with whether. What grammatical function(s)
does it play in your sentences?
articles
Articles are the last minor class associated with nouns. They always function as
modifiers of the head noun in a noun phrase, and traditionally are assumed to
contain only two words: the indefinite article a(n) and the definite article the.
(15) a. a visitor
b. the United Nations
The indefinite article has two written forms, a before a spoken consonant
and an before a spoken vowel; the corresponding spoken forms are /ey/,
//, and /n/, at least when spoken in isolation. The definite article may
be pronounced /@/ before a spoken consonant and /i/ before a spoken
vowel, though there is no indication of this in the standard spelling. A may
occur only with a singular noun, whereas the may occur with a singular or
a plural one.
Generally, a(n) and the are the only articles recognized for English. How-
ever, some linguists would claim that there is a plural of a, namely, some
(pronounced with a very reduced vowel): You have a visitor vs. You have some
visitors. And a case can be made for a zero article: The visitors must sign in
vs. Visitors must sign in and A/the moose blocked the path vs. Moose is good
to eat.
While the two traditional articles are easily recognized, their meaning
is quite complex. They are part of a system of devices that enable com-
municators to introduce people and things into a discourse and then keep
track of them as the discourse continues. Other devices in this system are
pronouns and demonstratives, and the distinction between common and
proper nouns.
Somewhat simplistically, the system works as follows: indefinite articles
signal the entry of a new entity into the discourse, e.g., Once upon a time
there was a big bad wolf. Once an entity has been introduced, it can be
referred to by an appropriate personal pronoun, e.g., He lived all alone.
Or it can be assigned a proper name, e.g., He was called Edgar, which can