Feature GB022: Are there prenominal articles?

Patrons: Jeremy Collins and Jay Latarche

Description ⇫

Summary

All questions concerning the order of elements aim to capture a pragmatically unmarked order. If both GB022 and GB023 are coded 1, please write a comment. Articles cover both definite or indefinite articles as defined in GB020 and GB021 respectively. In order to answer 1 for this feature, the markers' functions need to meet one of those definitions, so 1 should also have been answered for GB020 or GB021.

Procedure

  1. If there are articles, code 1 if in a pragmatically unmarked order they can precede the noun.
  2. If there is an item which occurs before the noun which may be an article but which receives ? for GB020 or GB021, then code ?.
  3. If demonstratives and articles are not well described, then code ?.
  4. If both GB022 and GB023 are coded as 1, please write a comment explaining this as we are interested in the reasons that a language may have both prenominal and postnominal articles.

Examples

Standard Arabic (ISO 639-3: arb, Glottolog: stan1318)

Coded 1. The definite article is prenominal and prefixes to the noun. The indefinite article is postnominal and marked by a suffixed /-n/ sound.

Definite article:

a. al-xubz  
DEF-bread  
‘the bread’ (Ryding 2005: 156)

Indefinite article:

b. bayt-un
house-INDF
‘a house’ (Ryding 2005: 156)

Further reading

Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Definite articles. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Indefinite articles. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

References

Ryding, Karin C. 2005. A reference grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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Values ⇫

Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment