XIII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2021

In several languages article is one of auxiliary parts and is used to carry certain meanings. A lot of students experience difficulties when get acquainted with articles owing to absence of articles in their native languages. For instance, case endings, demonstrative and possessive pronouns, sentence word order are used instead of articles in the Russian language. Such grammar means express definiteness and indefiniteness in Russian. In the English language articles accomplish the same function. However, the use of articles is endued with the following specific traits:

1) Articles do not have meaning without nouns.

2) It is impossible not to use articles since nouns assume its full correct meaning only in case they are used with articles.

3) Absence of article before noun can have meaning as well. This grammatical phenomenon is called zero article.

J. Jespersen analyzes zero article in his book “Grammar philosophy” [3].

F.F. Fortunatov is considered to be one of the pioneers who founded zero marks [5]. He described and analyzed zero affixes in his book “Comparative linguistics”. The book gave rise to such terms as “zero flexion”, “zero morpheme”, “zero affix”, etc [5].

However, there is different view point. Some scientists define zero articles as not more than exception to the rule. For example, the authors of the text-book “Theoretical grammar of modern English language” insist that zero article doesn’t exist because it cannot be equal to its own absence [4].

In Old English there was need for a word which would determine noun indefiniteness. At that moment numeral “an” (one) existed in the language. The 12th century became the source of appearance of such words as “one” and “an”. The spelling of numeral “an” transformed into “oon” and a little bit later into “one”.

In the period of 13-14 centuries the process of consonant reduction in unstressed syllables started. In such a way a new form of indefinite article “a” started to be used before the words beginning with a consonant. However, indefinite article didn’t lose “n”. The variant “an” still was used before the words beginning with a vowel. As a result both “a” and “an” started to be used in the Middle English period.

Thus, certain rules of indefinite article use were historically formulated:

1) indefinite article shows noun indefiniteness and is used before countable nouns in singular: “a book” – an indefinite book;

2) zero article is used with countable nouns in plural and uncountable nouns giving indefiniteness to the meaning: “books”, “bread”, etc.

As for noun definiteness definite article is intended to demonstrate it. Regardless of noun type, its singular / plural form all nouns may be used with definite article to get such characteristic as definiteness: “the book” – the certain book.

Definite article appeared simultaneously with demonstrative pronouns during the Old English period. The following demonstrative pronouns became auxiliary parts of speech: of masculine gender – se [se:] – этот, of feminine gender – seo [seo:] – эта, of neuter gender – thaet [ðæt] – это. The thing is that in the 5th century AD grammar category of gender existed in the language. With the laps of time those three forms merged and transformed into definite article “the”. This transformation happened as a consequence of many wars including Scandinavian invasion in the 8th century.

In conclusion we may say that articles is a vitally important grammar mechanism of the English language, without which nouns wouldn’t be of full value.

Литература:

1. Аракин В.Д. Очерки по истории английского языка : [учеб. пособие для пед. вузов] / В.Д. Аракин. – М. : ФИЗМАТЛИТ, 2007. – 147 с. URL: http://www.booksshare.net/index.php?id1=4&category=lunguistics&author=arakin-vd&book=2003&page=58 (дата обращения 02.02.21)

2. Википедия URL: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ (дата обращения 02.03.21)

3. Есперсен О. Философия Грамматики. URL: http://helpforlinguist.narod.ru/JespersenO/JespersenO.pdf (дата обращения 17.12.20)

4. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка: Учебник./ – М.: Высш. школа, 1981 – 285 с. URL: http://pnu.edu.ru/media/filer_public/2013/04/12/ivanova-burlakova-pochepcov.pdf (дата обращения 25.11.20)

5. Фортунатов Ф.Ф. Сравнительное языковедение : Ф.Ф. Фортунатов – М. : Издательство Юрайт, 2016. – 220 с. URL: https://avidreaders.ru/read-book/sravnitelnoe-yazykovedenie.html (дата обращения 01.11.20)