Definite - Use in Different Languages

Use in Different Languages

Examples are:

• Phrasal clitic: as in Basque: Cf. emakume ("woman"), emakume-a (woman-ART: "the woman"), emakume ederr-a (woman beautiful-ART: "the beautiful woman")
• Noun affix: as in Romanian: om ("man"), om-ul (man-ART: "the man"); om-ul bun (man-ART good: "the good man")
• Prefix on both noun and adjective: Arabic الكتاب الكبير (al-kitāb al-kabīr) with two instances of al- (DEF-book-DEF-big, literally, "the book the big")
• Distinct verbal forms: as in Hungarian: olvasok egy könyvet (read-1sg.pres.INDEF a book-ACC.sg: "I read a book") versus olvasom a könyvet (read-1sg.pres.DEF the book-ACC.sg: "I read the book")

Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Semitic, and auxiliary languages generally have a definite article, sometimes used as a postposition. Many other languages do not. Some examples are Chinese, Japanese, Finnish, and the Slavic languages except Bulgarian and Macedonian. When necessary, languages of this kind may indicate definiteness by other means such as Demonstratives.

It is common for definiteness to interact with the marking of case in certain syntactic contexts. In many languages direct objects (DOs) receive distinctive marking only if they are definite. For example in Turkish, the DO in the sentence adamları gördüm (meaning "I saw the men") is marked with the suffix -ı (indicating definiteness). The absence of the suffix means that the DO is indefinite ("I saw men").

In Serbo-Croatian (and in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian), and to a lesser extent in Slovene, definiteness can be expressed morphologically on prenominal adjectives. The short form of the adjective is interpreted as indefinite, while the long form is definite and/or specific:

• short (indefinite): Serbo-Croatian nov grad "a new city"; Lithuanian balta knyga "a white book"
• long (definite): novi grad "the new city, a certain new city"; baltoji knyga "the white book, a certain white book"

In Japanese, a language which indicates noun functions with postpositions, the topic marker (wa) may include definiteness. For example, 馬は (uma wa) can mean "the horse", while 馬が (uma ga) can mean "a horse".

In some languages, the definiteness of the object affects the transitivity of the verb. In the absence of peculiar specificity marking, it also tends to affect the telicity of mono-occasional predications.