Indefinite Article
An Indefinite Article is an article word which indicates that its noun is not a particular one identifiable to the listener.
- Example(s):
- “a”.
- “an”.
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- a Definite Article, such as: “the”, “this”, and “that”.
- See: Mass Noun,
References
2019
- (Wikipedia, 2019) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar) Retrieved:2019-11-17.
- … "An" and "a" are modern forms of the Old English "an", which in Anglian dialects was the number "one" (compare "on" in Saxon dialects) and survived into Modern Scots as the number "owan". Both "on" (respelled "one" by the Norman language) and "an" survived into Modern English, with "one" used as the number and "an" ("a", before nouns that begin with a consonant sound) as an indefinite article. ... In languages that employ articles, every common noun, with some exceptions, is expressed with a certain definiteness, definite or indefinite, as an attribute (similar to the way many languages express every noun with a certain grammatical number—singular or plural—or a grammatical gender). Articles are among the most common words in many languages; in English, for example, the most frequent word is the. Articles are usually categorized as either definite or indefinite. …
2019
- (Wikipedia, 2019) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)#Indefinite_article Retrieved:2019-11-17.
An indefinite article indicates that its noun is not a particular one identifiable to the listener. It may be something that the speaker is mentioning for the first time, or the speaker may be making a general statement about any such thing. a/an are the indefinite articles used in English. The form an is used before words that begin with a vowel sound (even if spelled with an initial consonant, as in an hour), and a before words that begin with a consonant sound (even if spelled with a vowel, as in a European).
- She had a house so large that an elephant would get lost without a map.
Before some words beginning with a pronounced (not silent) h in an unstressed first syllable, such as historic(al), hallucination, hilarious, horrendous, and horrific, some (especially older) British writers prefer to use an over a (an historical event, etc.).[1] An is also preferred before hotel by some writers of British English (probably reflecting the relatively recent adoption of the word from French, in which the h is not pronounced).[2] The use of "an" before words beginning with an unstressed "h" is more common generally in British English than in American. American writers normally use a in all these cases, although there are occasional uses of an historic(al) in American English.[3] According to the New Oxford Dictionary of English, such use is increasingly rare in British English too. Unlike British English, American English typically uses an before herb, since the h in this word is silent for most Americans. The correct usage in respect of the term "hereditary peer" was the subject of an amendment debated in the UK Parliament.[4]
The word some can be viewed as functionally a plural of a/an in that, for example, "an apple" never means more than one apple but "give me some apples" indicates more than one is desired but without specifying a quantity. In this view it is functionally homologous to the Spanish plural indefinite article unos/unas; un/una ("one") is completely indistinguishable from the unit number, except where it has a plural form (unos/unas). Thus Dame una manzana" ("Give me an apple") but "Dame unas manzanas" ("Give me some apples"). The indefiniteness of some or unos can sometimes be semiquantitatively narrowed, as in "There are some apples there, but not many."
Some also serves as a singular indefinite article, as in "There is some person on the porch".
- ↑ New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1999, usage note for an: "There is still some divergence of opinion over the form of the indefinite article to use preceding certain words beginning with h- when the first syllable is unstressed: ‘a historical document’ or ‘an historical document’; ‘a hotel’ or ‘an hotel’. The form depends on whether the initial h is sounded or not: an was common in the 18th and 19th centuries, because the initial h was commonly not pronounced for these words. In standard modern English the norm is for the h to be pronounced in words like hotel and historical, and therefore the indefinite article a is used; however, the older form, with the silent h and the indefinite article an, is still encountered, especially among older speakers."
- ↑ Brown Corpus and Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus, quoted in Peters (2004: 1)
- ↑ Algeo, p. 49.Template:Full citation needed
- ↑ https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/ldhansrd/vo990427/text/90427-43.htmTemplate:Full citation needed