Definite and indefinite articles

Examples of the Use of Articles

I do not want a gun in my house (any gun).
The gun is in his closet (implies there is a specific gun).
I am afraid of guns (all guns in general).

She sent me a postcard from Italy (an unspecific postcard - not a letter, not an e-mail).

It's the postcard that I have in my office (one specific postcard).
Getting postcards makes me want to travel (any postcard in general).

I have a dog (one dog).

The dog is very friendly (the dog that I have already mentioned).
Dogs make great pets (dogs in general).

Greta needs furniture in her apartment (furniture is a noncount noun).

She is going to select the furniture that she needs (the specific furniture that she needs).
She hopes to find some furniture this weekend (an unspecified, limited amount of furniture).

We are going to see the Statue of Liberty this weekend (the only Statue of Liberty).

If the English language has only one thing going for it in terms of simplicity (and it may only have this one thing), it's that its definite and indefinite articles combined only add up to four. The pronunciation, the spelling and the hundreds of irregular verbs may not make any sense at all, but at least we only have four articles where other languages can have more than 10.

Additionally, English has just one definite article, which helps to make up for the fact that we have to switch the words in a sentence around whenever we want to ask a question. Right?

What Is an Article?

An article tells you if a noun is specific or general. Several possible words can join together with a noun to create a noun phrase. A noun phrase is made up of the noun and all the other words that go with it. An article (a, an, some, the) gives information about the noun in the noun phrase. It can:

• 
  Tell us how many there are; if the article is “a” or “an,” we know there's only one.
  
• 
  Tell us whether the noun in question is a specific one (“the”) or just one in general
  
• 
  Signal to a reader or listener that a noun is just being introduced or that it's one he's already seen in a story
  

Look at the following sentence:

The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

In addition to using all the letters of the alphabet, this sentence has two noun phrases:

• 
  the quick, brown fox
  
• 
  the lazy dog
  

Both phrases include a noun (fox, dog), at least one adjective (quick, brown, lazy) and an article (the). Noun phrases can also include numbers, possessive adjectives or demonstratives (this, that, these, those).

Now that we know a little bit about what articles do, let's look at definite and indefinite articles individually to see which does what.

Indefinite Articles

English has three indefinite articles: two for singular nouns and one for plural and uncountable nouns.