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Other modern languages such as Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and others get by perfectly well without the qualifiers 'the' and 'a', which according to Wikipedia a

Other modern languages such as Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and others get by perfectly well without the qualifiers 'the' and 'a', which according to Wikipedia are the first and sixth most frequently used words in English respectively, so they don't seem cognitively compulsory for understanding. And juxtaposing British English with US English 'the' has throw-away status in assertions such as 'I am going to university' (Br) vs. 'I am going to the university' (US) but not in 'I am going to the store' so you're also dealing with local conventions. Plus in common usage 'the' and 'a' can be used in their technical sense in EG, 'not a [any old] car but THE car' with suitable prosody added for effect. With all the spins that can be imposed on articles 'the' and 'a' trying to formalize their use with precise definitions would seem like a lost cause. (and of course definitions use words which themselves remain undefined but please don't go there)

cjhveal 11y ago
It should be noted, however, that while many languages get by without explicitly marking definiteness, there are other linguistic techniques that can provide similar contextual clues that are required for understanding the pragmatic meaning of an utterance. Topic-comment structures[1] are often used to convey a sense of what is assumed as new versus known information. For instance, Russian's relatively free word order allows it to rearrange the constituents of the sentence so that the topic (what is being talked about, usually familiar to the listener) precedes the comment (what is being said about the topic). Japanese has this baked-in with particles that mark the topic (see [2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_grammar#Topic.2C_theme.2C_and_subject:_.E3.81.AF_wa_and_.E3.81.8C_ga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_grammar#Topic.2C_them...
- vorg 11y ago
  I would say that the definiteness use of "the", perhaps alone among English words, doesn't even have a part of speech because it's related to the thematic structure of English, whereas parts of speech are defined in the grammatical structure of languages. So "a" and "the" are different animals in a way, and perhaps shouldn't even be taught together.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    "A" and "the" are most certainly the same part of speech. There are many other words in the same category: many every my some his this Note that "my", "his", and "this" also mark definiteness on the noun phrase.
    - vorg 11y ago
      > "A" and "the" are most certainly the same part of speech. I disagree... > There are many other words in the same category: All these example words add semantic meaning to the noun phrase, and a primary sub-category for their use is whether the noun is countable (e.g. cat) or uncountable (e.g. salt): cats VS salt a cat/any cat, some cats, all cats/every cat VS some salt, all salt no cats, one cat, two cats, ... VS no salt, some salt few cats, many cats VS little salt, much salt my cat/s, our cat/s, your cat/s VS my salt, our salt, your salt his cat/s, her cat/s, its cat/s, their cat/s VS his salt, her salt, its salt, their salt this cat, that cat, these cats, those cats VS this salt, that salt The article "a" is only used with countable nouns (unless an uncountable is being used as a countable with meaning "a type of") and so fits into this sub-categorization. > Note that "my", "his", and "this" also mark definiteness on the noun phrase. In those cases the demonstrative is adding semantic information to the noun, whether possession ("my", "his") or location ("this"). If we split "A cat sitting on the rug meows." into the 2 sentences "A cat is sitting on the rug. The cat meows.", the only function of the "the" in the second sentence is to provide a cohesive link to something in the first sentence. Similarly, "Some salt stored in the shaker spills." can be split into "Some salt is stored in the shaker. The salt spills." This makes "the" solely a cohesive device, independent of the semantics and in the domain of thematics. So "a" and "the" are used orthogonally, each in different ways of analyzing an utterance.
      - thaumasiotes 11y ago
        "Some" is a perfect counterpart to "the", expressing only indefiniteness (regardless of noun number) where "the" expresses only definiteness: There's some guy out on the sidewalk erasing the chalk art. It's more common to use "a" there, but not required. Here are two English sentences in which a word appears solely to satisfy English syntactic requirements: Your house is big. It's raining outside. While interesting, those sentences aren't arguments that "is" is not a verb, or that "it" is not a noun.
- escherplex 11y ago
  Good observations. It's also interesting to look back 2K years at the kingpin Eurasian languages for evidence of definite/indefinite articles. From right to left, ancient Chinese (probably) lacked the qualifier but was exposed to its existence via the silk road (which used the lingua franca Aramaic which had them) and also through exposure to the Greek Buddhist colonies in North India (ancient Greek had a definite article). Same holds for Sanskrit in ancient India, which lacks any definite article. Same for old Latin. And Greece was subordinate to Rome, which only tolerated Greek as a language of the intelligentsia. Curious how an appendage in ancient secondary tongues became so mainstream in so many dominant contemporary languages.
  - cafard 11y ago
    In Homeric Greek, the definite article is more of a demonstrative adjective, isn't it, more "that man" rather than "the man"? And Greek hung on as the language of administration in the eastern part of the empire.
    - escherplex 11y ago
      True. The Wikipedia page on 'Article (grammar)' brings up the same points. Meanwhile, back in Greece,the European Union, and the OXIclean vote (a stain remover product in the US :) ...
lnanek2 11y ago
There's several cases in Chinese where you just have to add a da or some other meaningless word just to get things to sound the correct way with the right number of syllables and word spacing, however. The rules are different, but it's effectively just as useless but still required to talk correctly.
kwhitefoot 11y ago
In British English your two university examples mean different things. 'I am going to university' means that I will study at some unspecified university, but 'I am going to the university' means I am going to travel to a specific, presumably already mentioned, university or even more likely to the nearest one. The first would be said by a student while the second by someone who works at a university (lecturer, secretary, cleaner, jobbing builder, etc.). Similarly 'I am going to shop' and 'I am going to the shop'.
- escherplex 11y ago
  Written from the vantage point of a good RP education. Unfortunately in US 'going to shop' out of context would elicit the question 'where?' taking 'to shop' as an infinitive and not as an activity venue.
  - kwhitefoot 11y ago
    :-) Yes, I had a good education. My wife often points out when I am lamenting the current state of education that I was lucky enough to go to very good schools in the sixties and that education even then was also pretty bad if you were unlucky, lived in a rural area, deprived inner city, etc. Anyway, back to my poorly made point: I think that the example sentences show that even 'educated' British and American English are in many ways quite distinct dialects.

cjhveal 11y ago

It should be noted, however, that while many languages get by without explicitly marking definiteness, there are other linguistic techniques that can provide similar contextual clues that are required for understanding the pragmatic meaning of an utterance. Topic-comment structures[1] are often used to convey a sense of what is assumed as new versus known information. For instance, Russian's relatively free word order allows it to rearrange the constituents of the sentence so that the topic (what is being talked about, usually familiar to the listener) precedes the comment (what is being said about the topic). Japanese has this baked-in with particles that mark the topic (see [2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_grammar#Topic.2C_theme.2C_and_subject:_.E3.81.AF_wa_and_.E3.81.8C_ga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_grammar#Topic.2C_them...

vorg 11y ago
I would say that the definiteness use of "the", perhaps alone among English words, doesn't even have a part of speech because it's related to the thematic structure of English, whereas parts of speech are defined in the grammatical structure of languages. So "a" and "the" are different animals in a way, and perhaps shouldn't even be taught together.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  "A" and "the" are most certainly the same part of speech. There are many other words in the same category: many every my some his this Note that "my", "his", and "this" also mark definiteness on the noun phrase.
  - vorg 11y ago
    > "A" and "the" are most certainly the same part of speech. I disagree... > There are many other words in the same category: All these example words add semantic meaning to the noun phrase, and a primary sub-category for their use is whether the noun is countable (e.g. cat) or uncountable (e.g. salt): cats VS salt a cat/any cat, some cats, all cats/every cat VS some salt, all salt no cats, one cat, two cats, ... VS no salt, some salt few cats, many cats VS little salt, much salt my cat/s, our cat/s, your cat/s VS my salt, our salt, your salt his cat/s, her cat/s, its cat/s, their cat/s VS his salt, her salt, its salt, their salt this cat, that cat, these cats, those cats VS this salt, that salt The article "a" is only used with countable nouns (unless an uncountable is being used as a countable with meaning "a type of") and so fits into this sub-categorization. > Note that "my", "his", and "this" also mark definiteness on the noun phrase. In those cases the demonstrative is adding semantic information to the noun, whether possession ("my", "his") or location ("this"). If we split "A cat sitting on the rug meows." into the 2 sentences "A cat is sitting on the rug. The cat meows.", the only function of the "the" in the second sentence is to provide a cohesive link to something in the first sentence. Similarly, "Some salt stored in the shaker spills." can be split into "Some salt is stored in the shaker. The salt spills." This makes "the" solely a cohesive device, independent of the semantics and in the domain of thematics. So "a" and "the" are used orthogonally, each in different ways of analyzing an utterance.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      "Some" is a perfect counterpart to "the", expressing only indefiniteness (regardless of noun number) where "the" expresses only definiteness: There's some guy out on the sidewalk erasing the chalk art. It's more common to use "a" there, but not required. Here are two English sentences in which a word appears solely to satisfy English syntactic requirements: Your house is big. It's raining outside. While interesting, those sentences aren't arguments that "is" is not a verb, or that "it" is not a noun.
escherplex 11y ago
Good observations. It's also interesting to look back 2K years at the kingpin Eurasian languages for evidence of definite/indefinite articles. From right to left, ancient Chinese (probably) lacked the qualifier but was exposed to its existence via the silk road (which used the lingua franca Aramaic which had them) and also through exposure to the Greek Buddhist colonies in North India (ancient Greek had a definite article). Same holds for Sanskrit in ancient India, which lacks any definite article. Same for old Latin. And Greece was subordinate to Rome, which only tolerated Greek as a language of the intelligentsia. Curious how an appendage in ancient secondary tongues became so mainstream in so many dominant contemporary languages.
- cafard 11y ago
  In Homeric Greek, the definite article is more of a demonstrative adjective, isn't it, more "that man" rather than "the man"? And Greek hung on as the language of administration in the eastern part of the empire.
  - escherplex 11y ago
    True. The Wikipedia page on 'Article (grammar)' brings up the same points. Meanwhile, back in Greece,the European Union, and the OXIclean vote (a stain remover product in the US :) ...

lnanek2 11y ago

There's several cases in Chinese where you just have to add a da or some other meaningless word just to get things to sound the correct way with the right number of syllables and word spacing, however. The rules are different, but it's effectively just as useless but still required to talk correctly.

kwhitefoot 11y ago

In British English your two university examples mean different things. 'I am going to university' means that I will study at some unspecified university, but 'I am going to the university' means I am going to travel to a specific, presumably already mentioned, university or even more likely to the nearest one. The first would be said by a student while the second by someone who works at a university (lecturer, secretary, cleaner, jobbing builder, etc.). Similarly 'I am going to shop' and 'I am going to the shop'.

escherplex 11y ago
Written from the vantage point of a good RP education. Unfortunately in US 'going to shop' out of context would elicit the question 'where?' taking 'to shop' as an infinitive and not as an activity venue.
- kwhitefoot 11y ago
  :-) Yes, I had a good education. My wife often points out when I am lamenting the current state of education that I was lucky enough to go to very good schools in the sixties and that education even then was also pretty bad if you were unlucky, lived in a rural area, deprived inner city, etc. Anyway, back to my poorly made point: I think that the example sentences show that even 'educated' British and American English are in many ways quite distinct dialects.