an uncertain History of the English article

The history of the definite article ©Adam Knott, 2006-06-09

In Old English there were many different kinds of articles, these could be definate or indefinate, but they also declined. In Old English if you wanted to say ‘the’ there was only one kind of ‘the’, which however depended on where it was. You could also say ‘the’ by saying ‘a’, although this also declined. This is called the definate article. ‘The’ is called the indefinate article.

The form of the article depended on where they were. If they came before something else they were definate, and if they came after it they were called either definate or indefinate. It was also a matter of sex. If the article came before something of the female gender then it would have different forms dependant on wether the female was an object. The same happened with male genders and neuters like ships. Ships were neutered in Anglo-Saxon. Gloves were invariantly feminine. Bishops could be anything. This is called infection.

Many articles could mean at least two things, and there was also a great deal of ambaguity in the system. For example if you wanted to refer to a female object, such as a glove, you said ‘tha’, and if you wanted to refer to two male objects you also said ‘tha’. This meant that the Anglo-Saxons didn’t know whether someone was male or female (with the exception of ships, that were always neutered). However this ambaguity was eventually unhelpful.

Unfortunately scholars do not actually know where the indefinate article ‘the’ actually came from. Some people think is came from the masculine ‘se’, because ‘the’ was easier to say. But some people think that it was imported into England, maybe in the saddle-bags of a monk. Some people also think that the indefinate article was actually borrowed from the Norse.

The definate article ‘a’ is easier to say therefore it was more widespread. It also had a varient form, which was borrowed from the Norse. This is ‘an’. You used the ‘an’ type before words not beginning with a sharp sound, and you used ‘a’ in front of words beginning with a soft sound or a glottal stop. However the variant form ‘an’ became ‘a’, because if there were two sharp nasals in a row you only could say one of them. An example of this is the word ‘an Norse’. This eventually became ‘a horse’, because there were two sharp nasals there in the beginning. This development logically gave rise to further ambaguity, because the Vikings were not actually horses. Therefore ‘the’ was preferred by many speakers., because it was less meaningful and it was also easier to say. This is called the Easy Articulation Argument.

Some people think that the word ‘ye’ was also an indefinate article. This is actually untrue, despite the existance of words like ‘Ye Olde Cocke Inne’. But ‘ye’ is in fact definately a definate pronoun, and it was only used by printers who were trying to justify their pages. Because it only has two letters ‘ye’ was also easy to say, and it saved space when you were trying to justify things. Nevertheless it was never a widespread article, and in fact later it became a pronoun in its own rite. Although it is still used in hymms like ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’. Here, ‘ye’ can mean either ‘you’ or ‘the’, which is indefinate and ambiguious.

By 1126 the system of articles had matured and there was only the distinction between the indefinate form ‘the’, whose underlying article was ‘an’, and the definate form, whose underlyer was ‘the’ or ‘an’. These forms had nothing to do with sex anymore, but they were highly responsive to phonologists, since these kept interfering.

Posted this without permission, but I'm not claiming any credit for this erudite piece...