Is it true that Chinese does not have the definite and indefinite articles? For example, the - a - an

Alkanadi:Is it true that Chinese does not have the definite and indefinite articles? For example, the - a - an

It's true. Chinese doesn't have equivalents for "the" or "a/an" at all. Neither do Japanese or Slavic languages (except for Bulgarian, which has a definite article).

It's a bit of a downer that Zamenhof chose to include the definite article in Esperanto. It doesn't provide that much extra expressive power, and to my eye tends to "clutter" up text with unimportant information. There are only a few places where its use is genuinely helpful.

Tempodivalse:

Alkanadi:Is it true that Chinese does not have the definite and indefinite articles? For example, the - a - an

It's true. Chinese doesn't have equivalents for "the" or "a/an" at all. Neither do Japanese or Slavic languages (except for Bulgarian, which has a definite article).

It's a bit of a downer that Zamenhof chose to include the definite article in Esperanto. It doesn't provide that much extra expressive power, and to my eye tends to "clutter" up text with unimportant information. There are only a few places where its use is genuinely helpful.

The basic problem I see with the definite article in Esperanto is, that Z did not specify how to use it.
There is no "obvious" usage, as each language has its own set of rules concerning where the definite article must go, can go and must not go.

Compare for instance English with Spanish:
I like dogs. =/= Me gustan los perros.

Or English with Italian:
My car is new. =/= La mia macchina è nuova.

We now can conclude quite a lot about its usage reading Z's texts and other texts by experienced Esperantists, but it would have been convenient to specify the rules in the fundamental grammar.

----
Related

nornen:The basic problem I see with the definite article in Esperanto is, that Z did not specify how to use it.
There is no "obvious" usage, as each language has its own set of rules concerning where the definite article must go, can go and must not go.

Agreed. The various translations of Rule 1 also are not congruent: the Russian translation says it's OK to drop the article altogether if one is unsure how to use it; the English version does not feature this proviso (at least based on the editions I have read at the Akademio's website and Wikisource). This leaves me wondering if it is technically "nekontraufundamente" to omit "la" altogether, or almost always.

I have experimented with dropping "la" altogether (as some of you may remember from a previous thread) and concluded that clarity does not suffer in a large majority of instances. However, I am so used to the definite article that its near-complete omission still causes discomfort.

I think that, in many cases at least, it does not seriously matter whether one uses "la" or not, and so it becomes a matter of personal preference - cf. [La] filozofio estas nesolvebla afero; li jxuris lukti gxis [la] morto; ili kantis kaj dancis gxis [la] nokto; mi ludas [la] gitaron.

Students from languages without articles should then only have to learn where the article is essential, and then left to figure out the more optional cases from reading high-level Esperanto literature.

Alkanadi:Is it true that Chinese does not have the definite and indefinite articles? For example, the - a - an

Malay does not have too.

@Tempodivalse. You as a russian speaker, what is your opinion about the last post on this page?

nornen:@Tempodivalse. You as a russian speaker, what is your opinion about the last post on this page?

That is an interesting assertion in that thread. I would find it hard to believe that there isn't some other way to perform that same differentiation between "the red car" and "(a) red car". I suppose you could have no article and use "any" every time you don't mean a specific instance of " red car". One of those Russian examples does exactly that. Then the question becomes similar to verb conjugation with future/past tenses and so on: do we rely on certain additional words/phrases or just use "la" to cover this function in all cases?

It is odd that the usage wasn't specified precisely, but we seem to manage just fine with the looser definition.

kaŝperanto:

nornen:@Tempodivalse. You as a russian speaker, what is your opinion about the last post on this page?

That is an interesting assertion in that thread. I would find it hard to believe that there isn't some other way to perform that same differentiation between "the red car" and "(a) red car". I suppose you could have no article and use "any" every time you don't mean a specific instance of " red car". One of those Russian examples does exactly that. Then the question becomes similar to verb conjugation with future/past tenses and so on: do we rely on certain additional words/phrases or just use "la" to cover this function in all cases?

It is odd that the usage wasn't specified precisely, but we seem to manage just fine with the looser definition.

I really would love to hear some opinions from russian speakers on this topic. I have the slight impression, that the mentioned examples try to interpret something into Russian that simply isn't there. Maybe definiteness simply isn't a nominal feature in Russian. The same way animacy is a feature in Russian, but is absent in English. Or like sentience in Arabic which isn't accounted for in English.

nornen:@Tempodivalse. You as a russian speaker, what is your opinion about the last post on this page?

I honestly have never seriously thought of how determinateness is expressed in Russian - everything comes intuitively for me. But after thinking through that post, I can conclude that there is a significant degree of nuance possible, via word order and (to a limited degree) inflection.

However, I think it's misleading to say that Russian has the specificity demanded by English (or Romance languages).

The most obvious way to emphasise indefiniteness is to use an explicit helping word: "some" (какой-то мальчик); "any" (любой мальчик); "one" (один мальчик); "there is [a]" (есть), etc. The last two seem to be used somewhat more often used than their English counterparts, suggesting that in Russian they can absorb some of the indefinite article's function.

Now, word order. In Мальчик вбежал в комнату (Boy ran into room), importance is drawn to the first word in the sentence - the boy. So the implication is that it's some particular boy. If we say: "Into room ran boy", В комнату вбежал мальчик, that implication is lost. Instead, now the emphasis is on "into room" - hence, "into THE room".

However, a lot will depend on surrounding context, so it is not always safe to generalise. If a referent has been mentioned in a previous sentence, then its determinateness has been already established, and then word order will matter less.

And there are many structures where word order won't give clues to definiteness at all - Парень увидел девушку. "Lad saw girl." This sentence by itself, on my intuition, gives no clues, even if we change word order. We thus have to rely entirely on context.

More interesting is use of genitive vs. accusative case to indicate determinateness in a direct object. There is indeed a difference between Я не вижу книгу (I not see book, accusative) and Я не вижу книги (I not see book, genitive). The genitive suggests indefiniteness and the accusative definiteness.

Consider: Я ни одного стола не увидел (I not one table (genitive) not saw = I didn't see a single table), not *Я ни один стол не увидел* (w/accusative). The latter sounds odd because "один" ("one) firmly establishes indefiniteness, hence the genitive is needed for agreement.

EDIT: But this kind of genitive works only for negations. For positive sentences, I would never say *Я видел книги* genitive - always Я видел книгу, accusative. This is probably related to the "genitive of deprivation" where the negative construction "there is no X" receives the genitive, never nominative.

OK, flurry of editing is over. I'm glad these forums allow edits. Funny how you can speak a language all your life and still have to spend a long time trying to sort out and explicate your intuitions.

kaŝperanto:I would find it hard to believe that there isn't some other way to perform that same differentiation between "the red car" and "(a) red car".

There is, and it's called context.

Here's a fun game: Take an average English (or Romance-language) text and remove all definite and indefinite articles from it. I think you will find that you can understand the text just as readily, despite the awkward sounds. That's essentially how Russian texts read - though there are some other hints, mostly syntactical, towards determinateness that I have outlined above.

Chinese and Malay/Indonesian take it a step further and also let number be determined by context, using helping words like "many" when maximum clarity is desired.