TOPIC 3
The Noun and the Article
Nouns are words like ‘house’, ‘tree’, ‘box’, ‘horse’, ‘ghost’, ‘hope’, ‘linguistics’, ‘boy’,
etc. Words like these are usually accompanied by two small function words known as articles –
‘a’, and ‘the’. We start our discussion of the English noun by some preliminary introductory
remarks on the origin, use, and meaning of articles in English.
The article is a structural word which has the function to determine the noun in some
specific way. So, the article functions as a determiner of the noun.
In Modern English there are two articles: the indefinite article ‘a’, ‘an’ (‘a boy’, ‘an
apple’) and the definite article ‘the’ (‘the boy’, ‘the apple’). The position of the articles in English
is before the nouns they determine. In other languages they may follow the nouns they determine,
e.g., in Bulgarian. Compare: ‘The horse jumped the fence.’ – „Конят прескочи оградата.”
What is the origin of the articles in English? The indefinite article has developed from the
Old English numeral ‘an’ (= ‘one’). The numeral ‘an’ acquired later on the meaning of an
indefinite pronoun (= ‘a certain’, ‘one’). But the original numerical meaning of the indefinite
article is still quite obvious to this day in expressions such as: ‘in a minute’ (= ‘one minute’), ‘at a
time’, ‘twice a year’, etc.
The definite article has developed from the Old English demonstrative pronoun ‘that’.
The demonstrative meaning of the definite article is preserved in Modern English in expressions
like ‘nothing of the kind’ (= ‘of that kind’), ‘under the circumstances’ (= ‘those circumstances’),
etc.
How are we to define the meaning of the articles? Generally speaking, the indefinite
article expresses what is new. On the other hand, the definite article expresses what is known
already. Consider: ‘A man and a woman were walking down the street. The man was carrying an
umbrella and the woman, a bag.’
In addition to this, the indefinite and the definite article have the following uses. The
indefinite article is used to refer the thing or person denoted by the noun to a certain class:
‘He is a student.’, ‘John bought a new car.’ In such cases the speaker states that the thing or
person denoted by the noun is one of a class. The indefinite article has a classifying meaning. The
indefinite article is used also when a noun serves as a typical example of a class. In this case it
means that what is said of one representative of a class can be applied to any representative of the
same class, e.g.: ‘A policeman is always a policeman.’
Concerning the definite article, its basic uses are the following. It is used to identify a
particular object denoted by the noun, e.g.: ‘There is a tree in the garden. The tree is an oak.’ In
such cases the definite article has an identifying and individualizing meaning.
The definite article is used with nouns denoting unique objects like ‘the Earth’, ‘the sun’,
‘the moon’, ‘the sky’, ‘the universe’, ‘the North pole’, etc.: ‘Copernicus proved that the Earth
goes round the sun.’
The definite article is also used in a generic sense, i.e. when an object is taken as the type
representing all the characteristic features of a class. In other words, when the object is taken to
denote the whole class, e.g.: ‘The tiger is a big cat-like animal.’, ‘The horse is a domestic
animal.’
Here we do not mean a single individual tiger, or horse, but the class, the species as a whole.
Sometimes the article appears in its zero form. This means that it is omitted before the
noun, but such an omission has a special meaning. For example: ‘The book deals with problems
of language.’
The absence of an article before the noun ‘language’, i.e., the zero article before it, has a
generalizing force. It shows that the speaker does not have in view any individual language.
‘Language’ expresses here a more abstract and more general idea. In other words, the zero article
is a generalizing one. We mean ‘language’ in general, as a phenomenon. Now, let’s compare the
above example where ‘language’ is preceded by a zero article, with variants in which ‘language’
takes either the indefinite or the definite article:
1. ‘The book deals with problems of ø language.’
2. ‘English is a Germanic language.’
3. ‘The language spoken in Holland is called Dutch.’
We can see that while the zero article has a generalizing meaning, the indefinite article has a
classifying meaning, and the definite article has an individualizing meaning.
After these preliminary remarks on the origin, use, and meaning of the articles in English,
we proceed with the part of speech called noun.
The Noun is a part of speech which, following the three defining principles of meaning, form,
and function, we can describe as having the following characteristic features:
1. Meaning: it denotes ‘thingness’ in the widest sense of the word. The term ‘thingness’ includes
words denoting substance (like ’box’, ‘tree’, ‘house’, etc.) but it includes also words having an
abstract meaning such as ‘beauty’, ‘contemplation’, ‘hope’, etc.
2. Form: nouns have the morphological categories of number (singular and plural:
‘book’-‘books’), gender (e.g. masculine and feminine: ‘steward’-stewardess’), and case (common
and genitive: ‘John’-‘John’s’).
3. Function: a noun can combine with all kinds of parts of speech to form phrases and in the
sentence, it can function as subject, object, object complement, predicative, attribute, apposition,
and adverbial modifier.