An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. In English, both "the" and "a" are articles, which combine with a noun to form a noun phrase. Articles typically specify grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase, but in many languages they carry additional grammatical information such as gender, number, and case. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners, and quantifiers.
Kinds of articles
There are two types of articles. They are:
Definite article
A definite article is an article that marks a definite noun phrase. Definite articles such as English the are used to refer to a particular member of a group or class. It may be something that the speaker has already mentioned or it may be otherwise something uniquely specified.
For example, Sentence 1 uses the definite article and thus expresses a request for a particular book. In contrast, Sentence 2 uses an indefinite article and thus conveys that the speaker would be satisfied with any book.
1. Give me the book.
2. Give me a book.
The definite article can also be used in English to indicate a specific class among other classes:
The cabbage white butterfly lays its eggs on members of the Brassica genus.
However, recent developments show that definite articles are morphological elements linked to certain noun types due to lexicalization. Under this point of view, definiteness does not play a role in the selection of a definite article more than the lexical entry attached to the article.
Indefinite article
An indefinite article is an article that marks an indefinite noun phrase. Indefinite articles are those such as English "some" or "a", 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:
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:
A cookie is a wonderful thing to eat.
Indefinites can also be used to refer to a specific entities whose precise identity is unknown or unimportant.
A monster must have broken into my house last night and eaten all my cookies.
A friend of mine told me that happens frequently to people who live on Sesame Street.
Indefinites also have predicative uses:
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
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 Maori language has the proper article a, which is used for personal nouns; so, "a Pita" means "Peter". In Maori, 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. 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.
Negative article
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.
Zero article
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. 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.
