Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Articles - 1

Articles! I almost forgot to do one on these suckers.

Mostly, they're like English, but with a few extras (which I'll cover in a bit).

The first variation from English Articles is that Elessic Articles can be left off, if you want and it won't cause confusion. The second variation is that Elessic Articles match the Case and Plurality of their Noun.

Here's a pair of tables:

So, some explanation might be needed.

First, let's cover the Negative Article. In English, its often taught to children that there are two Articles: Definite (The) and Indefinite (A/An). In fact, there's a third: the Negative Article. This features much more prominently in German (where it is a preferred form over most negative sentences, and has a unique representation as kein/keine), but English has one, too, we just don't make a big deal of it. The Negative Article is "no" as in "I have no pets," or "not a" as in "he has not a care in the world."

There's also the Zero Article, which in English is represented by not using an Article. Simply put, a Zero Article is an Article that doesn't do what Articles do (which is define the specificity of a Noun). So why have a Zero Article if it doesn't do anything? Well, in Elessic, you don't have to use an Article, so the Zero Article is used in places where you normally wouldn't use one, but might also just be leaving out the Article. It basically says "I'm not being lazy, this really doesn't need an Article." It's a rare thing to use, but can be important for disambiguation.

Obviously, there's a lot of articles, but you mostly just use two, and they all pluralize like Nouns and use the standard case endings.

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