Different Types of Articles
Articles are made up of two parts, the articles themselves and the subjects they cover. An article is any part of a literary class of discourse characterized by pronouns that appertaining to the subject it mentions and pronouns that appertain to the object it names. The range of articles comprises a large part of human speech. In formal languages, there are few definite articles whose use is obligatory.
Article refers to any noun which denotes or describes a thing. Pronouns used in articles are pronouns like he, she, it, they, him etc. In English the articles have the advantage of being immediately clear and therefore the articles are fairly free in content and length. On the other hand in informal languages, the articles are liable to be vague and may not be definite.
The articles used to name objects are called countable nouns while those used to name non-countable nouns are called uncountable nouns. For instance, the articles for vehicles and boats are countable nouns while the indefinite articles like houseboat are uncountable nouns. In most languages, the articles for both countable and uncountable nouns can be mixed and both the types of articles can be used. For instance, in French the distinction between the countable and uncountable nouns in the sentence boat paris are ambiguous and therefore the sentence can be divided if either the countable or the uncountable noun is used.
As already noted, the articles are of two types, namely the indefinite article and the countable article. The indefinite article is of one kind, either indefinite or definite. indefinite articles are not specific; they refer to any sort of thing not specified by a definite article. indefinite articles may appear as pronouns, as nouns (plural nouns), as adjectives (number) and even as verbs (as a contraction of verb). The indefinite article can therefore appear with any type of word.
Pronouns are classed as definite articles and indefinite articles. A pronoun can be used as a noun, however it must be either the subject’s or the object’s gender. For example, ‘The dog eating the cheese’ is an example of a pronoun, but ‘The dog eating the cheese’ and ‘The dog is eating the cheese’ would be indefinite articles and therefore incorrect.
In English the articles of language are usually divided into two categories, these are the countable and unspecific articles. As the names of these articles indicate, they are of two different types. The countable articles are those that can have a direct meaning and are grammatically independent. Examples of countable articles are numbers, objects, time, months, days, planets, human rights and so on. Unspecific articles are the ones that have no grammatical meaning and are used instead for stylistic purposes.