Indefinite Articles (Feature 29)
From Apics
Navigation: ← prev | next → | Overview | Feature Areas | Socioling. Features
Feature Annotation
A morpheme is considered here to be an indefinite article if it accompanies a noun and signals that the noun phrase is pragmatically indefinite in the sense that it denotes something not identifiable by the hearer, like the English word a in a dog. This includes the use of the numeral for ‘one’ as an indefinite article and affixes on nouns signalling indefiniteness.
It is often not easy to decide whether the numeral ‘one’ is used as an indefinite article or not. For this feature, such a numeral should be regarded as an indefinite article if it is used with indefinite reference much more often than the English numeral one, even if its use is not obligatory (yet).
If the attributive numeral and the independent numeral differ (e.g. Seychelles Creole en sat 'one cat' vs. enn 'one'), please consider the attributive numeral.
If the indefinite-article word and the numeral for 'one' overlap (i.e. are partially distinct formally and partially identical), this should be counted as value 1 ("distinct").
Additional remarks
....
Values
| Value | Value Annotation | |
| 1 | The language has an indefinite-article word that is distinct from the numeral for ‘one’ | English a cat vs. one cat |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | The language has an indefinite-article word that is identical to the numeral for ‘one’ | German ein Bett 'a bed; one bed' |
| 3 | The language has an indefinite-article affix on nouns | Korowai abül-fekha [man-indef] ‘a man’ |
| 4 | The language has no indefinite article, but a definite article | E.g. Standard Arabic kitaab ‘book, a book’ vs. al-kitaab ‘the book’ |
| 5 | The language has neither an indefinite nor a definite article | E.g. Russian kniga ‘book, a book, the book’ |
| 6 | Other | (Please give details in the “General comments” field.) |
WALS No.
38 (Total)
