Article (part of speech)

An article (from Latin articulus 'joint' ), in traditional grammar also gender word or companion , is a word that is regularly used in connection with a noun (including nouns ) and that characterizes it primarily with regard to its definition . In German there is congruence , i.e. matching of features, between article and noun in gender , number and case . However , it is not essential to the concept of an article that such features be expressed; therefore the German term “gender word” is not used generally in grammar. It is possible for a language to differentiate gender in nouns, but at the same time not in articles, as in Welsh .

An article has no meaning of its own in terms of content, but rather sets the content description given by the accompanying noun in relation to concrete individuals, for example in the following way:

Using the description given, he introduces a new individual: a baby is sitting in this car . (a)
He takes up an already mentioned individual who can be clearly identified from the description: Give me the baby! (b)
An individual who has not yet been mentioned is identified, but whose existence can be clearly deduced from both the sender and the recipient: She has to go to the hospital, the baby comes. (c)
A general statement is made about something known by its nature: an infant has not yet mastered spelling. (d)

Such features of meaning are called indefinite (a), definite (b), specific (c) and generic (d) in grammar ; they are summarized in the grammatical category determination .

These meanings do not necessarily have to be expressed by independent words, but can also be indicated by affixes that have no status as independent words (for example in the Scandinavian or Balkan languages). Articles as independent words are prominent insofar as they occur in the major languages of Western Europe, which are spread across the globe: in English, in French, in Spanish, in Portuguese and also in German.

Linguistic assignment

Due to their function as a companion to nouns , articles are counted among the determinatives (also determinants, determiners, article words; DET) in recent linguistics . Under the extended definition of part of speech , the adjectival pronouns are also included as article words . It should be noted that article words are only rated as such if they accompany a noun. Without this feature, they are common pronouns.

In addition to the article in the narrower sense, such determinatives include forms derived from pronouns that can replace the article, for example no / this / that / some / every computer program instead of the / a computer program .

Languages that have neither an article in the strict sense nor an article word are articleless, even if the article word is included in the further definition of the part of speech “article” (ART). But can an i. e. S. article-free language type (such as Slavic languages) definitely have article words, for example: Latin iste homo or Russian этот мужчина for German 'this man' .

Syntactic status

The addition of an article creates a self-contained syntactic phrase . However, opinions differ as to whether the article represents the syntactic head or the noun in this connection ; accordingly, either a determin phrase or a noun phrase is used.

Manifestations

There are two semantically differentiated articles, namely the definite (definite) and the indefinite (indefinite) article . For their function see the keyword definiteness . German has both ( the vs. one ). Other languages such as ancient Greek only have a definite article, while others such as Turkish only have an indefinite article, while most languages have no article at all, including Latin .

The languages with articles differ in the extent to which their use in nominal expressions is possible or mandatory. In German z. B. indefinite plural nouns (like in there were students ) and indefinite mass nouns (like in can you lend me money? ) Have a so-called null article . Since this article- less form has a paradigmatic relationship to the indefinite article, one also speaks of the so-called indefinite null article . For the indefinite plural form ( students ) one assumes a plural zero article , to distinguish it from the zero article for uncountable nouns, such as money or thirst .

The German articles are congruent with the noun to which they belong in the grammatical categories gender , number and case . In many cases, these categories are more recognizable by the article than by the ending of the noun, such as the woman in the nominative and accusative vs. of women in the genitive and dative . Hence the methodological importance of the article leads to the analysis of these categories. In the German spelling dictionary, the gender is given via the form of the definitive article der, die, das .

Historical development of the article

Dissemination of definite and indefinite articles in the languages of Europe:

definite and indefinite article

specific article only

indefinite article and definite suffix

only certain suffixes

no items

As far as we know today, the Indo-European original language , from which most of the languages of Europe developed over the past 5000 years, had no article. The articles were first created in the various subsidiary languages.

The indefinite article

The indefinite article developed in many languages from the numerals (number word) for 1 and is therefore often identical to this in form.

Latin ūnus / ūna / ūnum (m./f./n.)

→ Italian uno / una

→ French un / une

→ catalan un / una

→ Spanish un / una

→ Portuguese um / uma

However, in contrast to the numerical word, it is usually not emphasized or only weakly emphasized and has therefore changed so much in its form in some languages and dialects that it can be clearly distinguished from the numerical word:

Latin ūnus / ūna / ūnum (m./f./n.)

→ Romanian unu / una (numerical word)

→ Romanian un / o (indefinite article)

Old English ān

→ new English one (numeric word)

→ new English a, an (indefinite article)

Old High German eine / einiu / einaz (m./f./n.)

→ Middle High German ein / ein / ein (m./f./n.)

→ Bavarian oa (numeral, standard form for all genera)

→ Bavarian a (indefinite article, standard form for all genera)

For the different functions of numerals and indefinite articles, compare the following German sentences, where the sentence accent is marked in bold:

I want a pencil. (Sentence accent on the numerical word: exactly one, not two or more )

I want a pencil . (Sentence accent on the object: and not something else, e.g. a ballpoint pen )

I want a pencil. (Sentence accent on the subject: and not someone else, e.g. my colleague )

I want a pencil. (Sentence accent on the predicate: and don't already have it )

Only in the first movement is a form of the word for number one, and it is as such also always stressed. In the remaining clauses there is an indefinite article and means any; as such, it does not carry the sentence accent, but rather leans its emphasis on the corresponding noun (in this case: pencil ).

The difference is also recognizable by the fact that the indefinite article - in contrast to the number word for 1 - can be reduced to the clitic in everyday German and thus completely loses its status as an independent word with emphasis:

I should like 'nen pencil.

I should like 'n pencil.

In more recent forms of colloquial language, however, the indefinite article is newly formed by enriching it with the particles that have been deprived of their deictic function as follows :

I want a pencil like that .

The definite article

The oldest language for which the use of a particular article can be proven is Greek . The corresponding morpheme goes back to a primitive Indo-European demonstrative , which in the course of the development of the Greek language has lost its demonstrative function to such an extent that it can be converted into a specific article:

urindogermanisch * só deh₂mos (pointedly: "these people")

→ ancient Greek ὁ δῆμος ( ho dēmos, definitely: "the people"; also "the entire population of an area")

Articles can also be found in Wulfila's Gothic translation of the Bible, the use of which Ingerid Dal traces back to the influence of the Greek source text in which the article was used. In Old High German (which is not a continuation of Gothic) the use of the article is also documented, although not yet fully consistent: The definite article developed from the demonstrative pronouns dër, diu, daz and has also been used as a relative pronoun. As a result, the so-called compound demonstrative pronouns emerged from the simple demonstrative pronoun and the inflectable demonstrative particle se . Therefore, at first only the first part is inflected; the end flexion only becomes the rule here later.

In Middle High German, the occurrence of nouns without articles is very limited; the use of the definite as well as the indefinite article becomes the rule in Middle High German. In this language period there is also the form of article placement before possessive pronouns and nouns, which is impossible in New High German: die iuweren schoenen tohter. Another construction that is not in use today is the simultaneous use of definite and indefinite articles, which can be demonstrated above all in front of a relative clause or in the superlative : one of the most beautiful grass. Only gradually did the development reach the point that the alternative use of definite or indefinite articles or lack of articles corresponded to specific differences in meaning.

This trend can be observed today in some of the Baltic and Slavic languages . In Czech contextual nouns are often preceded by a demonstrative pronoun, as is the case in Lithuanian . In Polish , demonstrative pronouns appear after them occasionally , which emphasize the aforementioned expressions.

The increasing penetration of article usage can be traced back to a constant tendency in the development of the ancillary syllables, which continues into the present day language. For linguistic reasons, there is a weakening of the adjacent syllables and also the expulsion of the adjacent syllable vowels ( apocope and syncope ). This primarily phonetic constant has consequences for the system of forms, as it has a significant effect on the flexion morphemes. Due to the weakening of the full-tone final syllable vowels to the Schwa ([ə], mostly written e ), different cases formally coincide; the article is used to indicate the case. As a result of the weakening of the adjacent syllables, the tendency from the synthetic to the analytical language structure is increased. However, it is also debated whether the weakening of the neighboring syllables might not be a consequence of the appearance of the particular article.

The article in different languages

The various daughter languages of Indo-European have developed articles only gradually. This happened in the Germanic languages such as German and English , in the Romance languages , the Celtic languages , Bulgarian , Albanian and Armenian . In Albanian , Bulgarian , Romanian and in the North Germanic languages , the indefinite article is prefixed as in German, but the definite article is implemented as a suffix - this, however, falls within the scope of determinative inflection .

The article in the West Germanic languages

All modern West Germanic languages have developed both a definite (def) and an indefinite (indef) article (ART) as independent words; both precede the noun (NOM) that they determine. Their usage is broadly similar in all of these languages; For comparison, consider the following sentence in the various West Germanic standard languages :

language	ART.def	NOM	copula	ART.indef	NOM
English :	The	sun	is	a	star.
West Frisian :	De	senses	is	in	stjer.
Dutch :	De	zon	is	een	ster.
Flemish :	De	at first	is	e	sterre.
Afrikaans :	The	son	is	'n	ster.
Luxembourgish :	D '	Sunday	ass	en	Strength.
German :	The	Sun	is	a	Star.

In this example sentence the definite article marks the noun sun as a (contextual) unique, i.e. that is, there is only one possible reference object outside of language (regardless of the fact that there are of course many stars, which by definition can also be suns for any other planets). In contrast, the noun asterisk is applicable to a whole class of reference objects outside of language. The indefinite article fulfills the generic function of assigning the generic name star as a predicate to the unique sun and thus the extra-linguistic reference object "sun" to the linguistic concept class of "stars".

The article in the North Germanic languages

Compare the following sentence in the different North Germanic written languages , where the indefinite article is an independent word (ART.indef) and precedes the noun to be determined (NOM), but definiteness is often expressed by a suffix (= def) on the noun. This suffix (developed from the Old Norse demonstrative pronoun hinn, hin, hit ) combines with the noun to be determined to form a word and is not graphically separated from the noun in these written languages, but is segmented by the noun in the following overview for the purpose of visualization using =:

language	NOM = def	copula	ART.indef	NOM
Icelandic :	sól = in	he	O	stjarna.
Faroese :	sól = in	he	a	stjørna.
Norwegian ( Nynorsk ):	sol = a	he	egg	stars.
Norwegian ( Bokmål ):	sol = a or sol = en	he	en	stars.
Swedish :	sol = en	ar	en	stjärna.
Danish :	sol = en	he	en	stars.
West and South Jutish, however:	æ sol	he	en	stjar.

However, as far as nouns are connected with preceding adjectives, the article is prefixed as an independent word in these languages as well, in Danish Sol en er rød "the sun is red", but den røde sol "the red sun".

In Swedish and Norwegian the article ending is also retained, the "double determinateness", ie (Swedish) den röda sol en or (Norwegian) den røde sol a . This "double determination" also applies in the East Danish dialect Bornholmisch . In Swedish, the preceding article is omitted in fixed phrases, e.g. B. Svarta Havet "Black Sea", Högra handen "the right hand", svenska folket "the Swedish people" as a fixed phrase, for example "the Swedes".

As the only sub-part of the North Germanic language area, the West and South Jut dialects use the preceding definite article æ . It is not inflected according to gender or number.

The article in the Romance languages

The Romance languages also have a definite and an indefinite article, although Latin , from which all these languages are derived, did not yet have articles. In Vulgar Latin , however, the use of the demonstrative pronoun illegally has gradually established itself as a definite article and has been expanded further in the Romance languages (except in Sardinian , where the pronoun ipse becomes the definitive article su / sa instead of illegally ). The usage is very similar to that of the West Germanic languages (compare above). In the Western Romance languages, the specific article has the status of a syntactically independent word, while in the Balkan Romance languages it is suffixed (see the following chapter).

Period	language	ART.def	NOM	copula	ART.indef	NOM
to 2nd century AD	Classical Latin	O	Sol	est	O	sidus.
2nd-8th Century AD	Vulgar Latin	(Ille)	Sol	est	(una)	stella.
Modern times (16th - 21st centuries)	Sardinian	Su	Brine	est	U.N'	isteddu.
	Italian	Il	Brine	è	una	stella.
	Portuguese	O	Sol	é	uma	estrela.
	Spanish	El	Sol	it	una	estrella.
	Catalan	El	Sol	it	U.N	estel.
	French	Le	Soleil	est	une	étoile.
	Graubünden Romance	Il	Sulegl	è	ina	staila.
	Friulian	Il	Soreli	al è	une	stele.

The article in the Balkan languages

The languages of the Balkansprachbund , although most of them are only largely related to one another, have undergone parallel developments (or influenced one another) in terms of article formation: While the indefinite article, as in all European languages, was derived from the numeral for 1 and the status of a syntactically independent article Word, the definite article was clitized and now functions as a suffix (= def) that merges with the noun (NOM):

language	NOM = def	copula	ART.indef	NOM
Albanian	Diell = i	ёshtё	njё	yll.
Bulgarian	Slănce = to	e	O	zvezda.
Macedonian	Sonce = to	e	O	dzvezda.
Romanian	Soare = le	este	O	stea.

The Armenian behaves similarly to the Iranian languages, although it is not one of these:

font	NOM = def	ART.indef	NOM	copula
Armenian	արեւ = ը	մի	աստղ	է.
Latin transcription	Arev = ё	mi	astgh	e .

The Greek has a Western European languages like structure, although it is counted many other criteria due to the Balkan languages:

font	ART.def	NOM	copula	ART.indef	NOM
Modern Greek	Ο	Ήλιος	είναι	ένας	αστέρας.
Latin transcription	O	Ilios	ine	enas	asteras.

Articleless languages

Many languages do not have an article. But even they usually have linguistic means to express or emphasize the certainty or indeterminacy of a noun.

Slavic and Baltic languages

Most of the modern Baltic and all Slavic languages (apart from Bulgarian and Macedonian , which belong to the Balkans language union ) know neither definite nor indefinite articles; an overview of the most important Baltic and Slavic standard languages (excluding the Balkan Slavs):

Language branch		language	NOM (subject)	copula	NOM (Rhema)
Baltic		Latvian	Pillar	ir	zvaigzne.
Baltic		Lithuanian	Pillar	(yra)	žvaigždė.
Slavic	West Slavic	Polish	Słońce	jest	gwiazdą.
		Slovak	Slnko	ever	hviezda.
		Czech	Slunce	ever	hvězda.
	South Slavic	Croatian	Sunce	ever	zvijezda.
		Serbian	Sunce	ever	zvezda.
		Slovenian	Sonce	ever	zvezda.
	East Slavic	Russian	Solnce	-	zvezda.
		Ukrainian	Sonce	-	zorja.
		Belarusian	Sonca	-	zorka.

In the example sentence, these languages regulate the semantic functions specificity ( the sun ) and genericity ( a star ) by means of the word order (see topic-rhema structure ), which is fixed in this example sentence and cannot be reversed, such as in German ( Ein Stern ist the sun. ).

In sentences with verbs (except the copula be , which is hardly used in many Slavic languages in the present tense) have the Slavic languages also means the verbal category aspect about expression, the effects of which may overlap with the meaning of articles.

Furthermore, demonstrative pronouns, which in all Indo-European languages underlie the definitive articles historically, can take over the marking of definiteness , for example in colloquial Czech:

ten měsíc (m.) "this moon"

ta hvězda (f.) "this star"

ti lidé (m./pl.) "these people"

ty hvězdy (f./Pl.) "these stars"

However, this is not an article in the grammatical sense, as it cannot be used in the example sentence above because of its demonstrative meaning:

* To slunce je hvězda. (cf. German "* This sun is a star.")

Slovene also has an indefinite article in colloquial language (formed from the numerical word en, ena, eno ('one, one, one')) and a particle ta ('this'), which expresses definiteness and functions similarly to an article:

En nov kolega je prišel. ("A new colleague has come.")

Ta nova kolegica je simpatična. ("This new colleague is personable.")

However, these only occur in connection with the indefinite form of the adjective. In the written language, en and ta must be omitted in both examples.

Semitic languages

Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew each know a specific, but not an indefinite article (see also under “Weblinks”). However, standard Arabic indicates the status of a noun in a Portmanteau morpheme , which simultaneously indicates the case and indefiniteness / definiteness of the noun (in this example = do for feminine indefinite nominative). The definite article (def =) is graphically and aurally fused with the noun it accompanies to form a word:

language	def = NOM	copula	NOM (= indef)
New Hebrew	ha-šémeš	O	koḫáv.
High Arabic	aš-šámsu	O	náǧma (to do). *

* The ending "-tun" is not spoken at the end of the sentence

The amalgamation of the Arabic article al- before the so-called sun letters is particularly strong .

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages do not know the category of the article. The noun is fundamentally indifferent to determinateness or indeterminacy, also to singular or plural. Other linguistic means are used to express certainty or indefiniteness, unless this is clear from the speaking situation. So in Turkish the possessive suffix, often the 3rd person - (s) i / ı / ü / u , can express certainty:

en büyük "very big, the biggest"

en büyüğü "the / the / the greatest (of them)"

iyi "good"

iyisi "the / the / the good (of it, of both)"

A case ending in the accusative can also express certainty:

Bir elma aldım. "I took an apple."

but: Elmayı aldım. "I took the apple."

Often the numeral bir "one" is used similarly to the indefinite article in German. Textbooks often refer to the word as an indefinite article for the sake of clarity. The parallelism is only an apparent one, because in Turkish the meaning as a numerical word is in the foreground. It marks the reference word as an individualized but not further defined singular. Compare (the word almak also means "buy"):

Bir elma aldım. "I bought an apple." (Only an apple)

İki elma aldım. "I bought two apples."

but: Elma aldım. "I bought apples." (Or an apple, the number remains indefinite, it just depends on the type.)

When using the plural, the apples in this speech situation must be individualized and thus determined and adopt the accusative ending:

Elmaları aldım. "I bought the apples."

There is no specific article in the other Turkic languages either; Like an indefinite article, the numeral for 1 can be used optionally in all:

language	NOM	ART.indef	NOM	copula
Azerbaijani	Günəş	( bir )	ulduz.
Tatar	Kojaş	( over )	juldyz.
Chuvash	Xəvel	( pĕr )	śăltăr.
Turkish	Güneş	( bir )	yıldız	to you.
Uzbek	Quyosh	( bir )	yulduz.

The use of the numeral is not arbitrary, but leads to a nuanced shift in meaning. Güneş bir yıldız means: The sun is a star (= one example of the set of “star”). Güneş yıldız (dır) , on the other hand, would rather mean: The sun has the property of being a star / is "starry" .

Finno-Ugric languages

In the Baltic Finnish languages there are neither definite nor indefinite articles; in the Hungarian language, however:

language	ART.def	NOM	copula	ART.indef	NOM
Estonian	O	Päike	on	O	does.
Finnish	O	Aurinko	on	O	tahti.
Hungarian	A.	nap	---	egy	csillag.

Basque

In Basque there is both a specific as well as an indefinite article. Both are placed after the respective noun that accompanies them:

language	NOM (= def)	NOM	ART.indef	copula
Basque	Eguzki = a	izar	asked	there.
German (literally)	Sun = the	star	a	is.

The indefinite article is identical to the numeral for 1.

Division article

In some languages there is the so-called division article , for example in French (de) and in Italian (di) in connection with the definite article. It is used when the noun indicates an uncountable amount and is mandatory in French and optional in Italian - for example:

French. Je mange you pain. (literally: "I eat from the bread.")

it. Mangio (del) pane. (literally: "I eat (of) bread.")

Historically, the partition article existed in almost all Romance languages; it stays longest in the central Romanesque area (Italo, Rhaeto and Galloromania).

Proprial article

In some European languages there is a tendency to use proper names (so-called nouns propria ) as parts of a sentence with the definitive article, although proper names within a sentence usually already clearly refer to an extra-linguistic individual. This is common in southern German colloquial language :

Monika helped Peter.

Such an article is semantically expletive ; that is, it does not in any way alter the meaning of the proprium or the noun phrase it accompanies. It is therefore called a proprietary article .

Proprial use of the definite article is found

in the Upper and Central German dialects as well as in Luxembourgish
in Portuguese , Galician and the Occitan , Northern Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic dialects
in Greek ,
in the Hungarian colloquial language,
in Arabic .
In Norwegian dialects , the (preceding) demonstrative pronoun takes the place of the (suppletive) article in personal names.

What is striking is its continuous distribution area across the main Alpine ridge and various language families .

Standard German also knows the proprial article if the name is provided with an adjectival (left) attribute or a substantive left attribute :

The beautiful Monika

The girl Rosemarie

Catalan

Particular attention should be paid to the proprial article in the Catalan language ; there it is also distinguished morphologically (i.e. in sound and writing) from the definitive article for appellatives . Compare:

En Joan va portar el llibre.

Joan brought the book.

BUT:

L ' home va portar el llibre.

The man brought the book.

Malagasy

In the Malagasy language, not only is the proprial article formally different from the definite article ny for communia, but there are even different forms of the proprial article, depending on whether it is used for person or place names:

For place names, the article takes the form of Toggle , such as in the capital of Madagascar , Antananarivo .
For persons there are again different forms depending on gender and the intention and relationship of the speaker to the person being discussed (speaker):

		male speaker	female speaker
relationship	family	i	i
relationship	distant	ra	(ikala)
intention	respectful	ilai	ra
	honorific	andria	ra
	pejorative	---	ikala

For the plural, the proprial article has the form ry in front of groups of people who z. B. form a family.
The forms ilai and ikala are also used in front of male and female animal names.

Forms of German Articles

Both the definite and the indefinite article of German are after

Gender : masculine, feminine, neutral,
Number : singular, plural,
Case : nominative, genitive, dative, accusative

inflected.

In purely mathematical terms, 24 different inflections would be possible per article. In fact, there are only six forms of the definite article and seven forms of the indefinite article, most of which assume several grammatical functions in the respective paradigm .

It is particularly important to note that the indefinite article in the plural always shows the zero form ∅:

Someone bought a book yesterday . (Singular)

Someone bought ∅ books yesterday . (Plural)

BUT: someone bought some / many books yesterday . (indefinite quantifiers )

Even in the singular, the indefinite article usually has the zero form as a companion to nouns that refer to something uncountable (unless the object, which is innumerable in itself, is portioned):

I bought a book yesterday . (countable)

I bought ∅ flour yesterday . (innumerable)

BUT: I bought a pound of flour yesterday . (indefinite quantifiers )

Here is an overview of the full inflection paradigm of the indefinite article:

The indefinite article
	Countable nouns ( " countable nouns ")				Innumerable nouns (" uncountable nouns ") of all genera
	Singular			Plural
case	masculine	feminine	neutral	Plural
Nominative	a	a	a	∅	∅
Genitive	one	one	one	∅	∅
dative	one	one	one	∅	∅
accusative	one	a	a	∅	∅

The definite article shows in the plural a coincidence of the forms for all three genera:

The definite article
	Singular			Plural
case	masculine	feminine	neutral	Plural
Nominative	of the	the	the	the
Genitive	of	of the	of	of the
dative	the	of the	the	the
accusative	the	the	the	the

In the linguistic discussion there is disagreement about whether the specific articles are to be regarded as free morphemes or whether they form an inflectional paradigm to { d- } or { de- } analogous to the demonstrative pronoun { dies- }, i.e. H. the < de-he, the < de-e and the < de-es .

Use in German

If the Germanic original language was still articleless, the use of the article becomes binding in the course of the development of the High German language as a rule for generic names ("The woman sleeps; a girl cries"). This is different with personal names and certain predicatives:

"Hans is a baker."

"Petra is Swiss."

Furthermore, certain additions do not allow an article: “I drive a car” (but: “He drives a Mercedes” and also “I drive the car to the yard”).

Use of the proprial article

According to the textbook, personal names are only used with an article if there is an adjective in front of the name: pretty Hans, clever Petra . In the Upper German- speaking area, however, it is common to use names (except in the salutation) with the specific article. Ingerid Dal attributes this to the fact that articles about family names penetrated that were actually appellatives, such as Strickære (“Seiler”) in Middle High German .

With a few exceptions, place names are always used without an article, especially those with neutral gender. Masculine and feminine country and regional names, on the other hand, are always used with a proprial article, e.g. E.g .: Slovakia, Vaud, Lebanon, the Ruhr area . In terms of regional language, this also applies to certain neutral regional names, e.g. Burgundy, Piedmont, Friuli, Tyrol, Vorarlberg, and numerous Swiss landscapes and valleys such as Bergell, Gaster, Ticino and Valais in Swiss High German .

River and mountain names always have a proprial article in German, e.g. E.g. the Elbe, the Amazon, the Schneekoppe, the Mount Everest .

Articlelessness

Articlelessness can also be found in a large number of proverbs and formulaic connections: “house and yard”; "Man and Mouse". Abstracts and names of substances can also be used as a subject without an article, without changing the meaning: “(The) beauty passes”; "(The) money rules the world". These are relics of the older articleless use. In this context are also poems that were supposed to reproduce stylistically traditional folk songs: "Boy spoke - Röslein struggled."

Alternatively, instead of the article, other determinants can be used, such as none / this / that / some / everyone / mine , etc. Complete articlelessness is subject to conditions such as those mentioned in New High German.

literature

Willy Birkenmaier: Article functions in an articleless language. Studies of Nominal Determination in Russian . In: Forum Slavicum . tape 34 . Munich 1979 (on the reproduction of the German article in Russian).
Hansjörg Bisle-Müller: Article words in German. Semantic and pragmatic aspects of their use . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-484-30267-4 (on the use of articles within a pragmatic theory of the coordination of shared knowledge).
Karl Bühler : Language theory: the representation function of language . 3. Edition. Fischer, Jena 1934, § 20. The functions of the article.
Karl Bühler: Language theory: the representation function of language (= UTB . Volume 1159 ). Reprint of the 3rd edition. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 1999, § 20. The functions of the article, p. 303-315 .
Wolfgang Gladrow: The determination of the noun in Russian and German. A confrontational study. Leipzig 1979 (on the reproduction of the German article in Russian).
Elvira Glaser : Syntactic Space Images . In: Franz Patocka, Peter Ernst (ed.): Dialect geography of the future. Files of the 2nd Congress of the International Society for Dialectology of German (IGDD) . Stuttgart 2008, p. 85–111 (for the distribution of the proprial article in Europe).
Hans-Jürgen Grimm, Gertraud Heinrich: The article . VEB Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1976 (thorough presentation for foreign language teaching without great theoretical demands).
Hans-Jürgen Grimm: Lexicon for article usage . 1987.
Hans-Jürgen Grimm: Investigation into article usage in German . VEB Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1986 (more scientifically demanding than Grimm / Heinrich [1976], also includes German-Russian and German-Czech comparisons).
Gerhard Helbig , Joachim Buscha: German grammar . A handbook for the foreigners' course. VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1979, OCLC 760569507 .
Nikolaus P. Himmelmann : Deiktikon, article, noun phrase . On the emergence of syntactic structure (= linguistic work . Volume 362 ). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-484-30362-X , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201607043933 (Zugl .: Köln, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1994).
Gottfried Kolde: The article in German factual nominal . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1989, ISBN 3-484-31096-0 (very thorough and scientifically broadly based presentation of the use of articles for descriptions of facts).
Ekkehard König : Definite articles and their uses . In: Aspects of linguistic variation, ed. By Daniel Van Olmen & Tanja Mortelmans . 2018, p. 165-184 , doi : 10.1515 / 9783110607963-006 .
Elisabeth Leiss: Article and Aspect . The grammatical pattern of definiteness (= Studia linguistica Germanica . Volume 55 ). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000, ISBN 3-11-016718-2 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201606205552 .
Tsugio Sekiguchi : 冠詞意味形態的背景より見たるドイツ語冠詞の研究 (Kanshi: Imi keitaiteki haikei yori mitaru doitsugo kanshi no kenkyū). 8th edition. 1–3, 三修社 (Sansyusya), Tokyo 1983, ISBN 4-384-00751-5 (three-volume work [total of 2304 pages] in Japanese on the meaning and use of the article in German).
Heinz Vater : The system of article forms in contemporary German . 2nd, improved edition. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-484-10359-0 (a classic, structuralist method).
Heinz Vater (Ed.): On the syntax of determinants . Narr, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-86057-421-3 (the articles deal with the articles in connection with other determinants such as 'each', 'this', 'all', 'some' etc., method: generation grammar).
Johan van der Auwera (Ed.): The Semantics of Determiners . 1980.

Web links

Wiktionary: Articles - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Wiktionary: Article word - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

“The Article” - Canoonet's online grammar

List of specific articles in many languages from Swedish Wikipedia

Chapter on the definite article in the World Atlas of Language Structures (English)

Matthew S. Dryer, Martin Haspelmath: Chapter on the indefinite article in the World Atlas of Language Structures. In: wals.info. (English).

Gerhard Brugger: Generic interpretations and expletive determiner. (PDF; 1.1 MB) (No longer available online.) In: lear.unive.it. 1993, archived from the original on November 13, 2013 .

deutsch-im-blick.de - Declining articles

Footnotes

↑ Source: Metzler, Bisle-Müller, Helbig.
↑ Further information / explanation of the null article. In: Canoonet , accessed September 23, 2019.
^ Wilhelm Pape , Max Sengebusch (arrangement): Concise dictionary of the Greek language . 3rd edition, 6th impression. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1914, DNB 36701226X , p. 563 , col. b (ancient Greek, German, zeno.org [PNG; accessed October 16, 2018]).
↑ See Gladrow and Birkenmaier in the literature list .
↑ See Glaser 2008 in the literature list .
^ Kurt Meyer : Swiss dictionary. That's what we say in Switzerland. Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart / Vienna 2006, p. 38; Hans Bickel , Christoph Landolt : Swiss High German. Dictionary of the standard language in German-speaking Switzerland. Edited by the Swiss Association for the German Language. 2., completely revised and exp. Edition. Dudenverlag, Berlin 2018, p. 105.

[1] Source: Metzler, Bisle-Müller, Helbig.

[2] Further information / explanation of the null article. In: Canoonet , accessed September 23, 2019.

[3] Wilhelm Pape , Max Sengebusch (arrangement): Concise dictionary of the Greek language . 3rd edition, 6th impression. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1914, DNB 36701226X , p. 563 , col. b (ancient Greek, German, zeno.org [PNG; accessed October 16, 2018]).

[4] See Gladrow and Birkenmaier in the literature list .

[5] See Glaser 2008 in the literature list .

[6] Kurt Meyer : Swiss dictionary. That's what we say in Switzerland. Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart / Vienna 2006, p. 38; Hans Bickel , Christoph Landolt : Swiss High German. Dictionary of the standard language in German-speaking Switzerland. Edited by the Swiss Association for the German Language. 2., completely revised and exp. Edition. Dudenverlag, Berlin 2018, p. 105.