The definite article in Indo-European: Emergence of a new grammatical category?

2007 ◽  
pp. 103-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte L.M. Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Definite Article ◽  
Grammatical Category

scholarly journals The Origins and Development of the Definite Article in Egyptian-Coptic

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 223-237
Author(s):  
Maxim Kupreyev
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Weak Form ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Definite Articles ◽  
Further Development ◽  
The Way ◽  
Good Deeds

The first appearance of the emphatic demonstratives pA/tA/nA in northern Egyptian letters of the 6th Dynasty and their absence from southern Egyptian sources indicates the growing difference between the language variants spoken in these broadly defined regions. Originating from the Old Egyptian pronominal stems p-/t-/n-, the use of these new demonstratives expands rapidly during the Middle Kingdom. In their weak form as definite articles, they indicate that a noun is knownin discourse and thus signal a hitherto hidden grammatical category – definiteness. Once the definite article is grammaticalised and starts to be used with a priori definite nouns such as pA nTr wa ‘the sole god’ or pA HqA ‘the ruler’ (18th Dynasty), the indefinite article appears. The further development in Demotic and Coptic shows that the article was on the way to becoming a noun marker. When attached to a relative phrase, it created a new noun, which could be further determined (xenpetnanouf ‘some good deeds’, ppetouaab ‘the saint’). The following article traces the regional origins of the definite article as well as the main principles governing their development.

scholarly journals Grammaticalization

Linguistics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Gary Miller ◽  
Elly van Gelderen
Keyword(s):  
Functional Category ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Hybrid Functional

The essence of grammaticalization is the evolution of a lexical category to a grammatical one or of a hybrid/functional category to another grammatical category. The first involves changes such as that of the verb have from “possess” to the marker of the perfect tense. The second involves changes such as that of to from a preposition (a hybrid category in English) to an infinitive marker or such as that of a demonstrative (e.g., the Latin ille ‘that’) to a definite article (the Italian il, the Spanish el, and so on). These changes have attracted attention for hundreds of years and are very well known. More recently, additional conditions and stipulations have been placed on this leading idea, but the essence remains the same.

scholarly journals Definiteness and Indefiniteness of Nouns in English and Albanian: A Contrastive Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Agnesa Çanta
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Category ◽  
The Other ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Numerical Function ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Functional Differences ◽  
The Difference

Abstract Different languages have different ways of indicating the definiteness and indefiniteness of nouns. In English, as in most languages, the category of definiteness and indefiniteness is not a grammatical category of nouns. It is rather a semantic category that is mainly conveyed by means of two articles: the definite article the and the indefinite article a/an. In Albanian, on the other hand, the category of definiteness and indefiniteness is a grammatical category realised mainly by case endings and the indefinite article një (a/an) which, along with the case endings, is used to indicate only the indefiniteness, as the definiteness relies exclusively on case endings. The main purpose of this paper was to indicate that, in spite of the difference in the ways they express the definiteness and indefiniteness which account for some of their functional differences, definite and indefinite nouns in English and Albanian also show some similarities. The contrastive analysis indicates that the definite nouns in English and Albanian share their main functions, namely the specific reference and the generic reference, although they do not certainly share the cataphoric reference, whereas the indefinite nouns share the descriptive, classifying, and categorising function as well as the numerical function, but they do not share the generic function.

Segment–zero alternations in Galician definite article allomorphy

2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-170
Author(s):  
Shanti Ulfsbjorninn
Keyword(s):  
Specific Pattern ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Theoretical Discussion

AbstractGalician presents an intriguing case of opaque phonologically-conditioned definite article allomorphy (PCA). Though Galician features in the general literature on PCA (Nevins 2011), there is a surprising lack of synchronic theoretical discussion of this specific pattern. The data appears to require allomorph selection arranged in a system of Priority (Mascaró 2005; Bonet et al. 2003; 2007). The pattern involves opaque segment ‘deletion’ and resyllabification, where segment deletion counterbleeds allomorph insertion along with morphologically-specific segmental changes. A Strict CV representational reanalysis is proposed in which there is no true allomorphy (no selection between competing underlying morphemes). All the forms are generated from a single underlying form, thereby undercutting PRIORITY.

The Grammatical Category of Iseo

2011 ◽  
Vol null (61) ◽  
pp. 435-453
Author(s):  
조현주
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Category

Zum Augment neuägyptischer Verbalformen

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Carsten Peust
Keyword(s):  
Initial Position ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Verb Forms

“On the Augment of Late Egyptian Verb Forms” -- It is shown that the augment which is characteristic of certain nominal verb forms of Late Egyptian – and survives in a few traces up until Coptic – contains none of those vowels that were regularly admitted at the beginning of Egyptian words. Rather, it must continue a wordinternal vowel /ǝ/ that moved into the initial position by a misdivision of the proclitic definite article, which frequently preceded participles and relative forms in speech. The same vowel [ǝ] occurred as an epenthetic sound before the preposition ‹r› /r/ ~ [ǝr], from which only ǝ remained after its consonantal body got lost. These phonetic insights prove that the Late Egyptian augment cannot derive from the Old Egyptian augment, as has been contended, but is a genuine innovation of Late Egyptian. Finally, the rise of unetymological initial vowels in various other nouns such as ⲉϭⲱϣ (“Nubian”) and ⲉϩⲟⲟⲩ (Bohairic for “day”) is explained.

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