🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, Dharmadeva wrote:

>       An Article is a word generally before a noun or a
> noun equivalent.

This sounds a bit vague (and what's a "noun equivalent" when it's at
home?).

> Generally three kinds of articles are to be
> recognised in English grammar--
> (1) Definite,
> (2) Indefinite (General) and
> (3) Numeral.
> 
>       In some opinion an Article is a kind of adjective but
> some others differ from them.

Well, yes, but then in some opinion the Earth is flat.
 
>       Definite Article:
> 
>       THE, THAT, THOSE may be treated as Definite article.

They certainly appear to occupy similar syntactic positions. Whether we
want to call them all 'definite articles' is another matter.

>       Indefinite (General) Article:
> 
>       "ONE who knows French may easily learn Spanish." :
> "For learning Bengali ONE may not go to Calcutta; ONE may
> learn the same from Benares."
> 
> Here 'one' is an Indefinite
> article. Here 'one' does not indicate any particular person
> but denotes a person in general.

Syntactically it behaves quite differently from 'the/that/those'. Why do
you want to lump it into the same category "article"?

>       Numeral Article:
> 
>       "700 Bengali youths under the leadership of Prince
> Vijaya sim'ha went to Lanka in 534 B.C."
> 
> Here '700' is a Numeral Article.

How do you account for the grammaticality of:

  The 700 Bengali youths.
  These 700 Bengali youths.

but the ungrammaticality of:

 *The these Bengali yuouths.

?

And what abvout possessives? And other words like 'some', 'certain',
'said', 'any', 'few'...?

-- 
Neil Coffey    http://ox.compsoc.net/~neil/
"Plus nous aurons de motz en notre langue, plus elle sera parfaicte"
                                                           [Ronsard]