The article

The article


Introduction

The problem of grammatical value of article and its place in language – one of the complicated questions of English grammar, and it is solved by various authors far not unequivocally.

The problem of the place of article in English language is presented by two basic theories: one of them considers combination of article to noun as the analytical form of noun, another carries article to auxiliary parts of speech and treats article plus noun as a combination of special type.
Some grammarians consider the article to be a kind of morpheme. The absence of the article is accordingly referred to as «zero-morpheme» applied in inflected languages to certain forms having no grammatical endings and thus differing from such forms of the same word as have their own endings. This statement is open to question and not in every sense valid. It seems more in accordance with the nature of the language to identify the English article as a typical morphological category, a special function-word used as an overt marker of the noun and contributing to its meaning.
The aim of this work is to investigate how and where to use the article, its features and complications of the usage and situations when there is no article with nouns.
The object of this work is indefinite article a, an and definite article the.
The subject of this work are sentences, where articles are used in different situations.
The task of this work is to find out difficulties of the usage of the article, its grammatical role, and also rules of its usage.
article usage noun grammatical
1. Definition of article


1.1 Article and noun

The article is a structural part of speech used with nouns. There are two articles in Modern English: the indefinite article and the definite article, also there is the zero article.

The indefinite article has the forms a and an. The form a is used before words beginning with a consonant sound (a book, a pen, a student). The form an is used before words beginning with a vowel sound (an opera, an apple, an hour). The article is pronounced [ә], [әn]; when stressed it is pronounced [ei], [æn].
The definite article has one graphic form the, which is pronounced in two ways: [ði] before a vowel sound [ði æpl] and [ðә] before a consonant sound [ðә ‘pen].
The indefinite article has developed from the Old English numeral an (one), and as a result of its origin it is used only with nouns in the singular.
The definite article has developed from the Old English demonstrative pronoun se and in some cases it has preserved this demonstrative meaning in Modern English.
The use of the indefinite article implies that the object is presented as belonging to a class.
The use of the definite article shows that a particular object is meant.
The absence of articles with class nouns in the plural, with abstract nouns and nouns of material has grammatical significance: it shows that the nouns are used in a general sense.
Articles directly concern to a noun, but if there is definition to it, articles are put before all definitions.
English articles include the indefinite article a/an and the definite article «the». Articles are used with nouns, and the choice of an article depends on the type of the noun and on the context.
All nouns can be divided into two main groups: proper nouns (Mary Smith, England, the Missouri River, Monday) and common nouns (a girl, a house, a notion, a habit, water, cheese, furniture, time, information, health).
Proper nouns, also called proper names, include people’s names (James Ashton, Mary Smith), geographical names (England, the Missouri River), names of companies and organizations (the United Nations, Harvard University), names of nationalities (an Italian, the Dutch), names of months and weekdays (August, Monday) and many other notions, objects and places that are capitalized and used as names.
Common nouns are divided into countable nouns (a girl, three girls, a house, two houses, several notions, different habits) and uncountable nouns (water, cheese, furniture, time, information, health).
Countable nouns are subdivided into concrete nouns (a girl, a house) and abstract nouns (a notion, a habit). Countable nouns with regular plural form add the ending s/es to form the plural.
Collective nouns are a subgroup of countable nouns; they denote groups of people or animals regarded as units (a family, a crowd, the public, a herd).
Uncountable nouns are divided into concrete nouns / mass nouns (water, cheese, furniture) and abstract nouns (time, information, health). The main distinguishing feature of uncountable nouns is that they can’t be counted; consequently, they can’t be used in the plural. Some uncountable nouns can be used as countable, with a different meaning (glass – a glass, time – 3 times), and there are other cases when uncountable nouns can turn into countable nouns.
The indefinite article a/an is used with countable nouns in the singular. The indefinite article a/an is not used with uncountable nouns (unless these are special cases when uncountable nouns are used as countable nouns). The main function of the indefinite article is to name one item belonging to a class of similar items.
The definite article «the» can be used with countable nouns in the singular and plural, as well as with uncountable nouns. The main function of the definite article is to point out a noun and make it definite and specific.
The indefinite article is rarely used with proper names. The definite article can be used with certain proper names.
English articles are difficult for us because there are no articles in Russian. Students often have a problem deciding where and which article to use.
Students sometimes try to avoid this problem by not using any articles with nouns, for example, they use «my, his, her, our, your, their» or «some / any» instead of the articles. Though it may be a fitting substitute in a number of cases, this method doesn’t work everywhere.