Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.

(TESOL)
Teaching the Article in English
Author(s): Randal L. Whitman
Source: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Sep., 1974), pp. 253-262
Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
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TESOL
Quarterly
Vol.
8,
No. 3
September
1974
Teaching
the Article in
English
Randal L. Whitman
A formulation of
English
article structure based on the
assumption
that
it is a
sequence
of
quantification
and determination rather than a choice
between
specified
and
unspecified
is advanced. Four
types
of articles are
discussed:
(1)
neither
quantifier
nor
determiner, (2) quantifier only, (3)
determiner
only,
and
(4)
both
quantifier
and determiner
(e.g.,
some
of
the
books).
Six
steps,
more or
less,
are
propounded
for
organizing
ma-
terials for
teaching
the article to
foreigners.
1.0 The article in
English
has
always
been considered one of the most
formidable
problems
to overcome in
teaching English grammar
to
foreigners,
and its misuse is one of the most evident
grammatical signs
that a
person
is not a native
speaker
of
English.
It is
my
belief that this state of affairs
does not reflect an
extraordinary complexity
intrinsic to the
article,
but that
it derives
instead,
at least in
part,
from a
long-standing misconception
that
linguists
and
language
teachers have had
concerning
the nature of the
article. In this
paper,
I will
present
an
analysis
of the article' and will then
suggest
an
appropriate organization
for the
presentation
of the article in
an EFL course.
2.0 Article structure. The
principal misunderstanding concerning
the
article is shared
by
most teachers of
English,
and is embodied in
thinking
about the articles in such terms as:
A/an is the indefinite article
and the is the definite article.
The
misconception
has been
preserved by many
transformational
linguists
in their formulations of the
phrase
structure rules
governing
article structure.
For
example,
Lester
(1971: 36) suggests
the
following
rules:
[Specified
)
Article
->
Unspecified
0
J
Specified -*
(the,...)
Unspecified
-
(a/an,...}
If
"specified"
is read as
"definite,"
and
"unspecified"
as
"indefinite,"
Lester's
formulation
exactly
matches the traditional one.
Mr. Whitman has
recently completed
an
introductory
text on
English linguistics
to
be
published by Holt,
Rinehart and Winston. He has
published
in
Language Learning.
tThis is an
expanded
version of the ranmmatical thesis
presented
in Whitman
(1972).
253
TESOL QUARTERLY
The
misconception
involved lies in
thinking
that
a/an
and the are essen-
tially
the same
thing (that is, "articles"), differing only along
a dimension
of
"definiteness/indefiniteness"
or
"specificity/nonspecificity." A/an
and
the
are,
in
fact, entirely
different
syntactic entities, quite
unrelated to each
other
except
for the fact that both occur within the same
general structure,
as denoted in the
following phrase
structure rules:
ARTICLE
->
(QUANI'ITY) +
(DETERMINER)
QUANTITY'
-
{a/an, one; two, three, some,
many,...}
DETERMINER -> NP
+ 's }
|the, this,....
In
plain English,
these rules state that the article consists of two
indepen-
dent
constituents, quantity
and
determiner,
each of which is
optional.
The
former serves to count the noun
phrase,
the latter to establish it as a known
(or definite,
or
specified) group.
Since the two entities are
independent
and
unrelated,
it is
misleading
to
generalize
them under one term2; we
are,
how-
ever,
victims of our own
grammatical education,
and the
impulse
to use the
term "article" in the old-fashioned
way may
be
overpowering.
In this
article,
therefore,
I do not advocate
doing away
with the
term;
in
fact,
I will con-
tinue to use "article" in the old
way myself.
2.1
Quantity.
The constituent
QUANTITY
has the semantic function
of
counting
the noun
phrase,3
and also has the
important syntactic property
of
establishing
whether the noun
phrase
is
singular
or
plural
for the
purpose
of number
agreement
in the verb.
There are two
singular quantifiers, a/an
and
one,4 and
quite
a
variety
of
plural quantifiers, including
all the
plural
numbers and the 'non-numeral'
counters, same, many, all,
and the like.
QUANTITY
l is
optional;
when the
option
is
unrealized,
the noun
phrase
is
generally,
or
universally quantified.
Thus the NP
boys, having
no
quan-
tifier,
is
interpreted
to mean
"any
and all
boys."
2.2 Determiner. A determiner is realized when the
speaker
refers to a
known
group,
whether
singular
or
plural.
When there is no
determiner,
the
noun
phrase
is understood to be what we call "indefinite." The NP a
boy,
for
example,
is indefinite because it lacks a determiner.
While most determiners
carry
some sort of additional
meaning (e.g.,
this,
that, my,...),
the determiner the is
peculiar
in that it is
purely
and
simply
a
determiner, doing nothing
more than
marking
the noun
phrase
as
involving
a known
group.
The known
group may
be identified or described
by
various sorts of
After
all,
NP and VP have a similar
relationship
to each other in the rule S
-
NP
+ VP,
but no one would ever dream of
using
one and the same term to cover both.
8 Not the
noun,
as will be seen in section 2.44.
'Perlmutter
(1968)
even claims that
a/an is a weak, derived form of one.
254
TEACHING THE ARTICLE
modifiers,5
the most common
type
of which has the
modifying phrase
follow-
ing
the noun.
The man from
Chicago...
The
girl
who
you
saw...
The
top
of the table...
This
type
of noun
phrase
accounts for
roughly
half of all instances of the.
2.3 Possessive determiners. The article turns out to have a
degree
of
recursivity by
virtue of the fact that
possessives
function as determiners in
English. Very nearly any
noun
phrase may
be made into a
possessive,
al-
though
we
frequently regard
some of the
following
as
unacceptable. (From
Gleason 1965:
165):
the
very
old man's beard
the man in the store's
pencil
that man there's car
a friend of mine's house
Acceptable
or
not, they
are
provided
for
by
that
part
of the rule that reads
DETERMINER -, NP
+
's
Since NPs themselves contain articles
and, potentially, determiners,
we
may
obtain
successively
embedded
possessives,
such as
my friend's dog:
NP
/\
ART N
I I
DET dog
NP 's
/\
ART N
I I
DET friend
NP 's
PRON
I
2.4 The interaction of
quantity
and determiner. Since the article con-
sists of two
constituents,
each
optional,
there are four
possible types
of arti-
cles to be found in a noun
phrase:
6
Including adjectives. However,
in most cases an
adjective
before a noun will not
identify
or
specify
the noun for
you,
so much as
give
additional
descriptive
information
about it. One can
always
test for this
by deleting
the
adjective
to see whether the re-
maining
noun
phrase
makes sense without it. Certain
types
of
adjectives, however,
such
as
superlatives
and ordinal numerals
may
be claimed to have a
specifying
function.
It is
very
rare for cardinal numbers to function this
way;
in the three
men,
for
example,
the number seldom
specifies
which men
you
are
talking
about. It should be
noted,
however,
that numerals
occurring
after the determiner have no
syntactic function,
and
should be considered as
simple descriptive adjectives quite apart
from the more
sig-
nificant
quantifiers.
255
TESOL
QUARTERLY
1. Neither QUANTrTY nor DETERMINER
2.
QUANT'ITY
alone
3. DETERMINER alone
4. Both
QUANT'lTY
and DE'TERMINER
2.41 Neither QUANTITY nor DETERMINER. Noun
phrases
with
neither
quantity
nor determiner are
"general"
in
quantity
and
"indefinite,"
e.g., boys, water, lamb,
etc.
They
also tend to have a rather abstract
flavor,
as if when we mention a noun with no
accompanying
article we are
actually
referring
to its
conceptual
character rather than its real character.
Thus,
for
example,
we
probably say "May
I have some water" rather than
"May
I
have water" so as to concretize
it, wanting
water in the
flesh,
as it were.
2.42 QUANTITY alone. Noun
phrases
with
quantity
alone are indef-
inite
by
virtue of not
having
a determiner. There is
probably
an
important
syntactic
distinction to be made between the numerals
one, two, three, etc.,
and the non-numerals
a/an, some, several, etc.,
but the distinction will not
be
explored
in this
paper.
2.43 DETERMINER alone. The
presence
of a determiner means that
the noun
phrase
involves a known
group;
the absence of a
quantifier
means
that the noun
phrase
is
generally quantified,
thus
including
all members of
the referred-to
group.
In other
words,
the
boys
means "all the
boys."
This
may
be said to hold even if the known
group
consists of but one member:
the
boy
is
generally quantified
to include "all one of him."
2.44 Both
QUANTITY and DETERMINER. When a noun
phrase
has
an article
consisting
of both
quantity
and
determiner,
an
of
must be inserted
between the two
(with
the
exception
of the
quantifier all, after which
of
is
optional).
The NP one
of
the
planes
has the structure:
NP
/\
ARTICLE N
//\
QUANT DET
I I
one
[of]
the
planes
The
quantifier
in such articles
plays
its usual
role, establishing
the number
of the noun
phrase.
In the above
example, although
reference is made to a
plural
set of
planes-a
known
group,
as
signalled by
the determiner-the
noun
phrase
as a whole is
singular,
as
per
the
quantifier
one.
On of the
planes
is
missing.
*
One of the
planes
are
missing.?
It has been
recognized
for some
time, however,
that this is an
extremely
common
sort of mistake.
Explanations
of it
usually
revolve about the notion that when a
speaker
gets
to the verb he has to check back to see what number the
subject
was. On his
trip
back
through
the
subject NP,
he comes across a
plural and checks no further.
256
TEACHING THE ARTICLE
With a double-barrelled article of this
sort,
we obtain a
glimpse
of the
fact that articles
per
se are neither definite nor indefinite. In one
of
the
planes,
for
example,
the article one
of
the contains a
determiner, yet
we still
do not know which
plane
is
being singled
out for discussion.
2.5 Constraints on
quantity
and determiner. There are certain con-
straints on the interaction of
quantifiers
and determiners.
First, a/an
cannot occur in an article that also contains a determiner.
For
singularity,
the
quantifier
one must be selected.
One of the
planes
is
missing.
*
An of the
planes
is
missing.
One result of this constraint is that an article
consisting
of
a/an
is neces-
sarily always
indefinite.
Second,
the
quantifier
must be smaller than the size of the known
group.
Except
for the
quantifier all, quantity
limits
size, i.e.,
must be smaller than
the
general quantity.
*
Four of the three
linguists agreed.
*
Three of the three
linguists agreed.
Two of the three
linguists agreed.
One of the three
linguists
was
right.
Third,
when
quantity
and determiner work
together,
the
quantity
must
quantify
the
top-most noun,
or the "head" noun.
Although
lower nouns
may
not be
quantified.
One of
my
uncle's cars is a Mercedes Benz.
*
One of
my
uncles' cars is a Mercedes Benz.
The former
represents "my uncle,
one of his
cars,"
and the latter "one of
my
uncles,
his car." Since car is the head noun of the
NP, only
the former is
acceptable.7
3.0 Generic uses of the article.
Although
the
analysis given
above
covers the
"generic plural" (section 2.42),
it does not account for the
generic
uses of
a/an
and the.
1. A mouse is smaller than a rat.
2. The mouse is smaller than the rat.
7
Interestingly enough,
and for reasons that are
probably
related to those
given
in
footnote
6,
it is
easy
to convince
people
that
(a)
One of
my
uncles' cars are
yellow
is
perfectly grammatical, meaning
"one of
my uncles,
his
cars,"
even
though they may
be hesitant about it
initially. However, only
the
very
hardiest can swallow
(b)
One of
my
uncles' car is
yellow
even when
they
are told that it has the
meaning
"one of
my uncles,
his car." It is
my
contention that both must be either
grammatical
or
ungrammatical,
and I
prefer
the
latter. I think
(a) passes
muster because it sounds sort of all
right,
so that we
may
con-
sider
assigning
an
interpretation
to it. It sounds all
right
for the same reason that is
given
in footnote 6. Sentence
(b), however,
doesn't sound all
right
because we know
that one must be
counting cars,
not
uncles,
so cars must be
plural.
257
TESOL
QUARTERLY
The difference between
(1)
and
(2)
is subtle. Generic
a/an
refers to
a
singular example, presupposing
that
(in
this
case)
one mouse is
going
to be
fairly representative
of all mice. When the
presupposition fails,
the
resulting
sentence is
anomalous;
while
(3)
is
quite acceptable, (4)
is anomalous.
3. A tree
provides
shade on summer
days.
4. ?A tree loses its leaves in the fall.
Since all trees
may
be said to
provide shade, any single
tree
might
be con-
sidered a fair
example.
But since some trees do not lose their leaves in the
fall, any single example
cannot
represent
all trees in
(4).
Generic
the,
on the other
hand,
calls forth an abstract
median,
the mid-
point
of the entire class. The mouse in
(2)
is the abstract
average
mouse.
That
generic
the is
abstract,
while
a/an
is
not, may
be seen in
comparing
sentences
(5)
and
(6).
5. The American
family
consists of 4.67
persons.
6. ?An American
family
consists of 4.67
persons.
The fractional number of
persons
stated
requires
an abstract
interpretation.
Generic articles
may
be used
only
with countable nouns. The reason for
this
may
lie in the fact that a
representative sample
and a median
point
both
imply differentiability,
which is not a characteristic
property
of mass and
abstract nouns.
4.0
Pedagogical organization.
The
organization suggested
below
pro-
vides for ordered
steps
relative to each other. It is not intended that the
steps
should be found in one
lesson,
or even in
contiguous
lessons.
4.1
Step
One:
Quantity.
Every language provides
for
counting things,
and most of us will
agree
that the
concept
of
"counting"
is easier to talk
about than the
concept
of "known
groups."
It thus makes sense to
begin
the learner on
English quantifiers.
He
will, therefore,
be restricted at this
point
to "count"
nouns,
and the
syntactic
lesson will concentrate on the
singular/plural distinction,
in which the
singular quantifiers a/an
and one
are contrasted to the
plural quantifiers two, three, some,
a lot
of, all,
etc.
This
step may conveniently
be combined with the demonstrative
pro-
nouns,
to
emphasize
the
singular/plural
contrast. The teacher
may
set the
class to
pointing
out and
identifying
various entities in various
quantities
about the classroom.
This is a book.
[Reserving
one for
emphatic cases]
These are three
pencils.
Those are a lot of books.
The
resulting
sentences
are,
in some
cases, recognizably non-authentic,
but
any
teacher will
recognize
the formidable difficulties of
achieving
authen-
ticity
at the
very beginning,
and it is assumed that
quantification
will be
introduced in the first lesson or lessons.
4.2
Step
Two: Generic
plural.
In the second
step,
the
quantifier
all
258
TEACHING THE ARTICLE
is
singled
out for contrast to the
generic plural,
as
meaning essentially
the
same
thing.
The learner is still restricted to "count" nouns and
may,
at
this
time,
be
given
the
paradigm
below.
SING. |
PLURAL I GENERIC
a book
|
some books a lot of books all books = books
One
type
of drill in this
step may
involve conversions of the
following
sort:
All
apples
are red. - ----
Apples
are red.
All
girls
are
pretty.
-----
- Girls are
pretty.
4.3
Step
Three: Non-count nouns. Non-count nouns are introduced in
contrast to count
nouns,
via the
augmented paradigm:
SING. ] PLURAL I GENERIC
a book
|
some books a lot of books all books = books
| some water a lot of water all water = water
There are two
points
to be made.
First,
the mass noun should be intro-
duced as
being semantically plural
but
syntactically singular.
The teacher
should
emphasize,
on the one
hand,
that mass nouns occur with all the non-
numeral
plural quantifiers, yet,
on the other
hand, they
take no
plural
end-
ings
and occur with
singular
forms of the verb. The semantic
plurality
of
mass nouns means
that,
in
particular,
the NP water should NOT be dis-
cussed as some sort of
singular
noun that doesn't "take"
a/an. Instead,
the
noun
phrase
water should be related to the NP all water as a
generic plural.
A/an
has
nothing
to do with
it,
and introduction of
a/an
in this context can
only
serve to confuse.
The second
point
is
relatively
minor.
Traditionally,
the learner is
exposed
to
count/mass
noun contrasts
through
drills that make a
heavy play
of
the
distinction between much and
many.
This
practice is,
I
think,
a mistake.
Rather than
making
it easier for the learner to understand the real semantic
and
syntactic
distinctions
involved,
much and
many simply
add another
dimension to the
problem.
There is
nothing
whatsoever about much and
many
which clarifies the
semantic/syntactic
issue. Under the
circumstances,
it
might
be better to use a lot
of
until the learner has mastered the
count/
mass distinction. This
practice might
have an additional desirable effect:
loss of the
foreigner's
characteristic nonauthentic use of much in sentences
like I have much
money.
4.4 Determiners. As
may
be
expected,
the introduction of determiners
to learners whose
language
lacks them is
going
to involve severe
conceptual
problems.
I doubt that this can be avoided even in the best of all
possible
materials. There are two
inter-dependent problems:
how to communicate
the idea of a known
group,
and how to communicate the
meaning
and func-
tion of the.
With
respect
to the
former,
it
might
be a
good
idea to introduce the
259
TESOL QUARTERLY
learner to which-NP
questions
at the outset
(Which
books are
red?),
which
should not
prove
to be of
great difficulty
insofar as
every language
that I
know of contains an
equivalent.
A determiner can then be introduced as
something
that
specifies
answers to such
questions.
I would
not, however,
start with the determiner
the,
but with the de-
monstrative
adjectives,
which are
fairly universal,
and
consequently
within
the
range
of the learner's
experience.
Which books are red?
These books.
Then the
may
be introduced as a third
type
of "demonstrative
adjective"
(retaining, perhaps,
the same
terminology
as used with this and
that),
whose
meaning
is neutral with
respect
to
location,
so that
location,
if
ap-
propriate,
must be
additionally
indicated.
Which books are red?
These books.
Which books are blue?
Those books.
Which books are
green?
The books on that table.
One of the reasons for
introducing
the in this
particular type
of noun
phrase-that is,
with a
following specifying phrase-is
that this form ac-
counts for close to
50%
of all instances of the in
running
text.8 In
addition,
with the
specifier right
there in the noun
phrase,
it is more
explicity
defined
than
otherwise,
which should make it easier for the learner to understand
what is
going
on.
When
introducing
the less
explicit
"second-mention" use of
the,
it
may
work out well to link it to the use of
pronouns,
which
have, by
and
large,
the same
range
of use.9 For
example,
I saw a book.
The
book
was called
"MobyDick."
A
girl
kicked me. I kicked hegirl back.
Once the
equivalence
is
understood,
it
may
be
explained
that other
things
being equal,
the
pronoun
would be used.
If, however,
there is some confu-
sion as to
antecedent,
then the noun
phrase
with the would be used.
8Followed
by
cases of
previous
mention and
"unique"
nouns (each about
15%).
These
percentages
have been
approximately
calculated in a number of texts.
9The
pronoun,
for that
matter,
can be shown to be a definite noun
phrase
even
though
it doesn't occur with a determiner. Its semantic definiteness can be seen in
phrases
that
parallel
distribution with
previous
mention definite
NPs;
its
syntactic
de-
finiteness
may
be seen in
phrases
like one
of us,
some
of them, etc.,
in which an
of
is
required
after a
quantifier co-occurring
with a
pronoun.
This
suggests
that
of
is not con-
ditioned
by
the
determiner,
but
by
the definiteness of the noun.
260
TEACHING THE ARTICLE
Possessives-in all forms:
my, Mary's,
the
boy's-can
be introduced at
virtually any point
now. About the
only problem
that can be
anticipated
is
with those learners in whose
language possessives
are not determiners. In
Italian,
for
instance,
the
possessive adjective nearly always
co-occurs with
the definite article: il mio libro ('the
my book').
4.5
Step
Five:
Quantity
and determiner. In the fifth
step,
the learner
is introduced to noun
phrases
that contain both a
quantifier
and a deter-
miner. In addition to
learning
the formal structure of the article
(i.e.,
to
learning
to use
of),
the learner must be
apprised
of the fact that it is the
number
given by
the
quantifier
and not of the noun itself that establishes
the number of the NP as a whole.
Thus,
rather like the first exercise
(sec-
tion
4.1),
the learner should be drilled on the contrast between
singular
and
plural quantifiers
in
complex articles,
with the students
describing
subsets
of
things
in the
classroom, perhaps.
One of these books is red.
One of the books on that table is blue.
Two of
my
books are
green.
4.6 Generic articles. Generic
usage
of
a/an
and the is
probably
best
delayed considerably. They
are
not,
in
fact,
all that
commonly found,
and
are left
entirely
out of
many
EFL
texts,
which teach the
generic plural
alone.
5.0 Final note. As
you go along, you may
become
discouraged by
an
extraordinary propensity
for
your students-especially
if
they
are Asian-
to leave out
a/an,
even after
they
have mastered
other, seemingly
more
complex
forms of the article. On the face of
it, they
have
every
reason to
leave it out.
Why
should
they say
a book rather than book? It is
singular
because there is no
plural morpheme -s,
and it is indefinite because there
is no the.
The answer lies in the
generalized
function of the
article, briefly
men-
tioned in section 2.41: the article serves to concretize the noun as well as to
limit it. Nouns without an article are
abstractly understood;
if a noun is
to refer to a real
thing,
it must have an article. Thus
book, by itself,
is
really "book-concept"
or
"book-abstraction,"
and a book is
something
that
you
can hold and read.
However,
communicating
this rather
vague concept
to a learner
may
not be
easy. Perhaps
the best that can be done is to contrast the
meanings
of nouns that occur both
abstractly
and
concretely.
A stone is a chunk of rock.
Stone is a
good building
material.
A chicken is a bird that
goes
"cluck."
Chicken is
good
to eat.
However,
care should be taken to
point
out that
English
makes
very
limited
use of this sort of abstraction. Otherwise
your
students
may
seize
upon
261
262 TESOL
QUARTERLY
what looks like a useful
principle
and come
up
with sentences like "Teacher
is a fine
way
of life."
REFERENCES
Gleason,
H. A. Jr. 1965.
Linguistics
and
English grammar.
New
York, Holt,
Rinehart
and Winston.
Lester,
Mark. 1971.
Introductory transformational grammar of English.
New
York,
Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Perlmutter,
David. 1968. On the article in
English. ERIC/PEGS
Document Number
29. In mimeo.
Whitman,
Randal L. 1972. Note on article in
English, Working papers
in
linguistics
(University
of
Hawaii), 3,
6.