Articles
English, like most European languages, uses only two articles:
- indefinite a
- definite the
By contrast, Tongan has three articles, and possessives also have a three-level definiteness distinction:
- indefinite ha. Example: ko ha pālangi ('a white person', or any other person from somewhere other than Tonga)
- semi-definite (h)e. Example: ko e pālangi ('the white person' in the sense that the person does not belong to some other race, but still rather 'a white person' if there are several of them)
- definite (h)e with the shifted ultimate stress. Example: ko e pālangí ('the white person', that particular person there and no one else).
Read more about this topic: Tongan Language
Famous quotes containing the word articles:
“It was not sufficient for the disquiet of our minds that we disputed at the end of seventeen hundred years upon the articles of our own religion, but we must likewise introduce into our quarrels those of the Chinese. This dispute, however, was not productive of any great disturbances, but it served more than any other to characterize that busy, contentious, and jarring spirit which prevails in our climates.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to “dress up like daddy.””
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size—take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)