Leaving my Door Unlocked was a Bad Decision

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ndefinite article

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An Indefinite Article Link is an article that marks an indefinite noun phrase. Indefinite articles are those such as English “a” or “an”, which do not refer to a specific identifiable entity. Indefinites are commonly used to introduce a new discourse referent which can be referred back to in subsequent discussion:

1. A monster ate a cookie. His name is Cookie Monster.

Indefinites can also be used to generalize over entities who have some property in common:

1. A cookie is a wonderful thing to eat.

Indefinites can also be used to refer to specific entities whose precise identity is unknown or unimportant.

1. A monster must have broken into my house last night and eaten all my cookies.
2. A friend of mine told me that happens frequently to people who live on Sesame Street.

Indefinites also have predicative uses:

1. Leaving my door unlocked was a bad decision.

Indefinite noun phrases are widely studied within linguistics, in particular because of their ability to take exceptional scope.

Proper article

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A proper article indicates that its noun is proper, and refers to a unique entity. It may be the name of a person, the name of a place, the name of a planet, etc. The Māori language has the proper article a, which is used for personal nouns; so, “a Pita” means “Peter”. In Māori, when the personal nouns have the definite or indefinite article as an important part of it, both articles are present; for example, the phrase “a Te Rauparaha“, which contains both the proper article a and the definite article Te refers to the person name Te Rauparaha.

The definite article is sometimes also used with proper names, which are already specified by definition (there is just one of them). For example: the Amazon, the Hebrides. In these cases, the definite article may be considered superfluous. Its presence can be accounted for by the assumption that they are shorthand for a longer phrase in which the name is a specifier, i.e. the Amazon River, the Hebridean Islands.^{[citation needed]} Where the nouns in such longer phrases cannot be omitted, the definite article is universally kept: the United States, the People’s Republic of China.

This distinction can sometimes become a political matter: the former usage the Ukraine stressed the word’s Russian meaning of “borderlands”; as Ukraine became a fully independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it requested that formal mentions of its name omit the article. Similar shifts in usage have occurred in the names of Sudan and both Congo (Brazzaville) and Congo (Kinshasa); a move in the other direction occurred with The Gambia. In certain languages, such as French and Italian, definite articles are used with all or most names of countries: la France, le Canada, l’Allemagne; l’Italia, la Spagna, il Brasile.

If a name [has] a definite article, e.g. the Kremlin, it cannot idiomatically be used without it: we cannot say Boris Yeltsin is in Kremlin.

— R. W. Burchfield^[3]

Some languages use definite articles with personal names, as in Portuguese (a Maria, literally: “the Maria”), Greek (η Μαρία, ο Γιώργος, ο Δούναβης, η Παρασκευή), and Catalan (la Núria, el/en Oriol). Such usage also occurs colloquially or dialectally in Spanish, German, French, Italian and other languages. In Hungarian, the colloquial use of definite articles with personal names, though widespread, is considered to be a Germanism.

The definite article sometimes appears in American English nicknames such as “the Donald”, referring to current president Donald Trump, and “the Gipper”, referring to former president Ronald Reagan.^[4]

Partitive article

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A partitive article is a type of article, sometimes viewed as a type of indefinite article, used with a mass noun such as water, to indicate a non-specific quantity of it. Partitive articles are a class of determiner; they are used in French and Italian in addition to definite and indefinite articles. (In Finnish and Estonian, the partitive is indicated by inflection.) The nearest equivalent in English is some, although it is classified as a determiner, and English uses it less than French uses de.French: Veux-tu du café ?Do you want (some) coffee?For more information, see the article on the French partitive article.

Haida has a partitive article (suffixed -gyaa) referring to “part of something or… to one or more objects of a given group or category,” e.g., tluugyaa uu hal tlaahlaang “he is making a boat (a member of the category of boats).”^[5]

Negative article

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A negative article specifies none of its noun, and can thus be regarded as neither definite nor indefinite. On the other hand, some consider such a word to be a simple determiner rather than an article. In English, this function is fulfilled by no, which can appear before a singular or plural noun:No man has been on this island.No dogs are allowed here.No one is in the room.

In German, the negative article is, among other variations, kein, in opposition to the indefinite article ein.Ein Hund – a dogKein Hund – no dog

The equivalent in Dutch is geen:een hond – a doggeen hond – no dog

Zero article

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See also: Zero article in English

The zero article is the absence of an article. In languages having a definite article, the lack of an article specifically indicates that the noun is indefinite. Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner.^[6] In English, the zero article rather than the indefinite is used with plurals and mass nouns, although the word “some” can be used as an indefinite plural article.Visitors end up walking in mud.