ARTICLES.Definition. 175. An article is a limiting word, not descriptive, which cannot be used alone, but always joins to a substantive word to denote a particular thing, or a group or class of things, or any individual of a group or class.
Kinds. 176. Articles are either definite or indefinite.
The is the definite article, since it points out a particular individual, or group, or class.
An or a is the indefinite article, because it refers to any one of a group or class of things.
An and a are different forms of the same word, the older ān.
Their origin. 177. The article the comes from an old demonstrative adjective (sē, sēo, ðat, later thē, thēo, that) which was also an article in Old English. In Middle English the became an article, and that remained a demonstrative adjective.
An or a came from the old numeral ān, meaning one.
Two relics. Our expressions the one, the other, were formerly that one, that other; the latter is still preserved in the expression, in vulgar English, the tother. Not only this is kept in the Scotch dialect, but the former is used, these occurring as the tane, the tother, or the tane, the tither; for example,—
We ca' her sometimes the tane, sometimes the tother.—Scott. An before vowel sounds, a before consonant sounds. 178. Ordinarily an is used before vowel sounds, and a before consonant sounds. Remember that a vowel sound does not necessarily mean beginning with a vowel, nor does consonant sound mean beginning with a consonant, because English spelling does not coincide closely with the sound of words. Examples: "a house," "an orange," "a European," "an honor," "a yelling crowd."
An with consonant sounds. 179. Many writers use an before h, even when not silent, when the word is not accented on the first syllable.
An historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy.—Macaulay.
The Persians were an heroic people like the Greeks.—Brewer.
He [Rip] evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business.—Irving.
An habitual submission of the understanding to mere events and images.—Coleridge.
An hereditary tenure of these offices.—Thomas Jefferson. |
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