Re: Articles

Brian M. Scott schrieb:
<Jake.Pentland@xxxxxxxxx> wrote

In the Germanic and Romance languages, at least,
indefinite articles come from words for 'one'.

.... and consequently, there is no indefiniteness
marker for the plural in German(ic languages), but
there is a partitive article 'de' that seems to have
emerged in late latin (also used as preposition)
in Romance languages.


... did the articles enter the languages as the
declensions system eroded [...]?

Has the meaning of definiteness ever been carried
by the declension system? I don't think so.

BTW, how do fenno-ugrian languages express this
feature? My remaining command of Finnish is too
poor, but I remember that there is no article.
The partitive case is used for immensurable
and uncountable objects - I think indefiniteness
should be expressed by the numeral for 'one', too.


> Not necessarily: Greek would appear to be a counterexample.
So is Old Norse, which had a postposed definite article --
<-inn> in the masc. nom. sing. -- that developed from the
dem. pron. <hinn>.

Not to forget that modern Danish and Romanian still have
appended (enclitic) definite articles (no idea about other
IE languages). But I don't know if these languages have
indefinite ones.


Frank
.

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