Linguists determine language possession of indefinite articles using specific syntactic tests
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Linguistic reference material confirms that linguists use specific syntactic criteria, such as testing whether a language forbids bare nominal arguments for indefinite noun phrases, to determine if a language possesses an indefinite article.
# How do linguists determine whether a language has an indefinite article?
Tags: articles, parts-of-speech, numbers, numerals, indefinite-article
- Score: 14
- Views: 384
- Answers: 2
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: hippietrail (15126 rep)
- Asked: 2011-10-02
- Edited: 2011-10-02
- Site: linguistics
## Question
Given:
For those languages which have it, the indefinite article mostly if not always is derived from the numeral for "one".
Most languages have numbers but many lack articles.
How do linguists decide whether a language under investigation has an indefinite article as opposed to just having a word for "one"?
## Answers
### Answer by Louis Rhys (score: 5)
An indefinite article forbids bare nominal arguments (like bare nouns) when the nominal arguments are indefinite.
For example, in English "*I saw bear" is not valid, while in Mandarin (there is a word for one but no indefinite article) "wǒ kànjiàn xióng le" (I see bear ASP) is valid.
In French (with a plural indefinite article "des"), *"Il y a livres là-bas" (lit. There are books over there) is not not allowed while in English (no plural indefinite articles), it is OK to say "There are books over there".
An indefinite