What Is an Article?

An article is used to determine whether a noun in a sentence is either known to the audience (the definite article) or non-specific and general (the indefinite article).

For example, when we say, “The dog is in the kitchen,” we are making the assumption that the listener knows which dog we mean.

On the other hand, one might say, “A dog is a type of mammal.” This is general and non-specific. We are referring generally to any dog in this instance.

How is the definite article used?

The definite article in English is used before the noun it relates to and it does not change, regardless of number, case or gender.

This is not the case in other languages. In French, for example, the word for ‘the’ changes from ‘le’ to ‘la,’ depending on whether the noun that follows it is masculine or feminine nouns, while ‘les’ is used in front of plural nouns. In German, both number and also case are taken into account.

How is the indefinite article used?

The indefinite article in English is ‘a,’ or ‘an’ before a vowel.

For example, ‘a dog’ or ‘an ant.’

When a noun becomes plural and we still want to be non-specific, we generally remove the indefinite article, or introduce the word ‘some,’ depending on how this impacts the meaning.

For example, “A dog is a mammal” becomes “Dogs are mammals,” in the plural.

However, you cannot say, “Some dogs are mammals,” without changing the meaning. Although we are talking about dogs that we don’t know, thereby matching our indefinite plural requirement, it is saying that some dogs are mammals, while others are not.

On the other hand, you could say “I have a pencil,” in the singular and “I have pencils,” or “I have some pencils,” in the plural. In this case, the word ‘some’ is behaving like a plural indefinite article.

Due to this ambiguity, ‘some’ is classified as a determiner but not as an article, as this could be misleading.

Meanwhile ‘the,’ ‘a’ and ‘an’ are both articles and determiners. The definite and indefinite articles are a specialised subset of this wider group of words, determiners.