Theoretical grammar of english

5. The art (A), № of A, def & indef A.
The noun is usually preceded by the A.
Problems:
~the number of As; ~the status of the A; ~meanings/functions
The status of the A in modern Eng. 2 aspect of the question:
1) Is the A a morpheme or is it a separate word?
If we compare Eng to German→in German the A is a word, it has different forms, each form will find reflection of the categories of gender, number and case. Every form of the A in German contains the root morpheme and the inflexion morpheme.
Some grammarians mentioned morphemic character of the Eng A. They term the Eng A a structural element of the noun. They say that the indefinite A with the noun “cat” signals singularity (as the morpheme “s”[cats] signals pluraliry). The A can change its position in reference to the noun (a cat, a blafck cat, a lovely black cat). A-s can be substituted by other words (the cat→this cat, my cat). Such features are not characteristic of morphemes → most Eng grammarians treat the A as a separate word.
2) If the A is a separate word, is it a separate p.of sp. or is it not such? If not, the A is to be described among other p-s of sp.
Class-cal Eng grammars treat the A is an Adj; or more often as a pronoun. The idea that the A is sort of a pronoun originates from the fact that in Old Eng, the As were derived from pronouns. This is true only of “the” (se→the).
Круизинга includes “a” among the indefinite pronouns and “the” – among the demonstrative pronouns.
Jesperson and Sweet also treat As as pronouns.
Kerm → a pronominal attribute.
Representatives of structural grammar (Freeze) treated the A among the structural words called the determiners.
Russian linguists treated the A as a functional p.of sp. because different A-s have specific meanings and functions.
The number of Eng A-s
The older grammatical tradition spoke of 2 A-s(the, a). But practical use of language showa that in speech nouns can be used in 3 different ways:
~(1)Language is a means of communication.
~(2)Everone ahould learn a foreign language.
~(3)She speaks English. Do you know the langage?
In the 3 cases the word “language” has different meanings:
(1) the zero A.
This term was introduced by Смирницкий and Штелинг.
→the, a, 0.
The idea of the zero article originates from the notion of the zero morpheme. Sometimes the absence of the grammatical marker is meaningful, and it doesn’t necessarily happen in the analytical language (руки, рук – no case marker). We can speak about zero A-s if we accept the point of view that an A is a morpheme. Ильишь argues that we can’t stick to this term for it’s essentially incorrect. We can prove it easily that an A is a word, and no word can be a zero. He proposes to interprete the phenomenon of the absence of the A as meaningful, and he introduces another terminological interpretation – significant meaningful absence of the article. He also notes that such cases are very different from the cases when the A is omitted. Omition of the A is a stylistic phenomenon found in newspapers, telegrams, advertisments, printing.