Interpretation of the status of the English Article

There are two general approaches to the grammatical morphological status of the Article (Drawing 4.2).

I. II.

 

As a word it defines a certain type of the Noun and has its Grammatical Meaning (to define concrete known or any, not particular, noun)

The combination ‘an article + a noun’ is considered to be an analytical form of the Noun (its material morphological index)

Drawing 4.2. The problem of Status of the English Article

1. The approach to the Article as to a definite Syntacategorematic word which defines the Noun.

Article here is compared with the Adjectival Pronoun (his, her, its, etc.).

BUT such approach leads to treating the combination ‘Article + noun’ as an attributive word-combination and, consequently to treating Article as the Attribute in the Sentence, which is not possible for the Article does not possess the Lexical Meaning.

It has its own Grammatical Meaning which is to define concrete known or any, not particular, noun. Its Grammatical Category is based on the opposition of the definite – indefinite attitude to the Noun. Though there is no Lexical Meaning of any type of the Article. Consequently it can not be regarded as a member of a sentence because only Categorematic words/parts of speech (which have their own individual lexical meanings) are considered as members of the Sentence.

For example, compare:

*It is my book.

My is an attribute of a direct object book as it, firstly, defines the noun book and, secondly, has its own lexical meaning, it is lexically-morphologically expressed by the possessive pronoun my in the possessive form of a personal pronoun I which means ‘the subject of a verb when the speaker or writer is referring to himself/herself’’.

*It is a book. It is the book.

Neither article a nor article the can be considered as the attributes because in spite of having grammatical meanings neither of them has a lexical one (what then the attribute will be expressed by?).

 

2. The approach to the Article as to a peculiar morpheme of the Noun.

The English linguist Christophersen emphasizes analytical nature of English and considers the Article as a morpheme of the Noun.

Firstly, he distinguishes three Morphological Forms of the Noun in the Category of the Article (table 4.1):

Table 4.1