Timeline for Why is there no plural indefinite article?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
23 events
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| S Mar 31, 2014 at 3:31 | history | suggested | curiousdannii | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Remove reference to "Anglican", which only refers to the church. I had considered replacing it Anglo, but decided to simplify it more and remove any need for it.
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| Mar 31, 2014 at 3:24 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Mar 31, 2014 at 3:31 | |||||
| Aug 4, 2012 at 1:22 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | Spanish has plural indefinite articles: unos, unas. These tend to be replaced by things like algunos/-as. | |
| S Oct 6, 2011 at 0:39 | history | suggested | yoozer8 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
typo fixes
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| Oct 6, 2011 at 0:38 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Oct 6, 2011 at 0:39 | |||||
| Jul 25, 2011 at 15:22 | vote | accept | Daniel | ||
| Jul 25, 2011 at 13:42 | history | edited | Alain Pannetier Φ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 25, 2011 at 13:41 | comment | added | Alain Pannetier Φ | @Konrad. Thx. Corrected. I initially meant to say it was a partitive article turned full fledged indefinite article. | |
| Jul 25, 2011 at 10:52 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | French does have an indefinite plural article: “des” | |
| Jul 25, 2011 at 3:57 | comment | added | Alain Pannetier Φ | [...] The case of Romanian is special because it probably acquired its enclitic article from the neighbouring Slavic languages. As for the indefinite article, although Greek and German are powerful counterexamples, I'm still inclined to "guess" a similar mechanism where "one/ein/un/uno" is becoming more necessary as inflectional complexity gradually fades away. I know this is just the possibly completely off the mark feeling of a dilettante but, I'll try to confirm/infirm this theory - time permitting. | |
| Jul 25, 2011 at 3:50 | comment | added | Alain Pannetier Φ | @Cerberus. From what I've seen the weak adjectives inflection for definite nouns is a Germanic innovation that can be observed in many present and ancient languages - with variations (Old English, German, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic etc). In many cases the definite article is enclitic and sometimes doubles with a separate proclitic demonstrative. My feeling is that if this complex inflectional system disappears ("weakens" ;-), then the proclitic demonstrative becomes more frequent/necessary, possibly influenced by the enclitic article. In short it "passes in front".[...] | |
| Jul 25, 2011 at 1:52 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | Yay! Excellent. // Your theory that articles developed to compensate for loss of inflection may be true for the indefinite article; for definite articles, it may still be true, but Greek weakens it a bit (elaborate inflection but plentiful definite articles). // As to your theory about articles having originally been suffixes: surely that applies only to those few languages you mentioned? // German has three types of adject. inflection, roughly 1. after definite article, 2. after indefinite article, 3. without article. Dutch has 1. definite, 2. indefinite/without. Greek had no different types. | |
| Jul 24, 2011 at 21:33 | comment | added | CesarGon | @Peter Shor: Indeed, Spanish, Catalan and Galician do have plural indefinite articles. | |
| Jul 24, 2011 at 19:12 | history | edited | Alain Pannetier Φ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 24, 2011 at 17:54 | history | edited | Alain Pannetier Φ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 24, 2011 at 17:49 | comment | added | Alain Pannetier Φ | @PeterShor, Thanks. I corrected. Actually Italian doesn't have any plural article either. As for German I'll be tempted to use "einige" (which is also present in Old English (ænig) and actually evolved into "any"). Thx community ;-) | |
| Jul 24, 2011 at 17:22 | comment | added | Peter Shor | I don't believe that German has a plural form of indefinite articles (einem is dative singular), but Spanish and Catalan (two languages I don't know) apparently do. | |
| Jul 24, 2011 at 17:14 | history | edited | Alain Pannetier Φ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 24, 2011 at 17:02 | history | edited | Alain Pannetier Φ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 24, 2011 at 16:59 | history | undeleted | Alain Pannetier Φ | ||
| Jul 23, 2011 at 19:16 | history | deleted | Alain Pannetier Φ | ||
| Jul 23, 2011 at 19:16 | history | edited | Alain Pannetier Φ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 23, 2011 at 18:31 | history | answered | Alain Pannetier Φ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |