As readers of my previous linguistics posts will have noted, I am a great believer in the potential of statistical and computational linguistics. Such valuable data, however, need to be treated carefully and set in an appropriately designed and historically-sensitive theoretical and explanatory context.

Many languages do not have articles, although most of these do have some kind of emphatic particle or demonstrative pronoun that can, if need be, serve this role. Even within the Indo-European family of languages, there is much variation—Latin and Sanskrit have none, Ancient Greek one, neo-Latin and neo-Germanic languages a full range of three. Russian has none.

In the longer-term history of modern Western European languages, therefore, it would be reasonable to suppose that there has been a general trend towards greater use of articles, spurred, presumably, at least in part, by a greater interest in distinguishing between degrees of definiteness.

This, however, begs a crucial question. What do we mean by ‘definiteness?’ How do we ‘define definiteness,’ in a multilingual context in which we must admit that many languages lack the means to express it? The more we examine it, the concept of definiteness becomes ever more slippery, ambiguous and hard to define.

So-called definite and indefinite articles perform a wide range of functions in present-day English and these can certainly not be exhaustively described using a theory based on a binary distinction between definiteness and its opposite.

It is also important to note the existence of a ‘zero article’ in English, meaning that the distinction is non-binary—a choice always being available between at least three options. Zero-articles (like other zero-elements in linguistics) are harder to track statistically or computationally, although they clearly bear much semantic weight.

If, as various recent studies have suggested, the use of the definite article ‘the’ in English has been on the decline in the more recent history of the language, we must entertain the possibility that this loss may have flowed equally in the direction of the ‘indefinite’ and the ‘zero’ article or elsewhere.

It is therefore worthwhile not only counting words, but also examining how they are used in particular historical contexts and what the use of an alternative phraseology might entail in semantic and hence ideological terms.

I take as my starting point two texts that were recently juxtaposed in the Guardian newspaper as exemplifying this supposed trend towards decreasing use of the definite article. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/15/definite-article-radical-decline-last-century-research The first comes from the opening to George Washington’s State of the Union address in 1790, the second from that of Barack Obama in 2014.

Here first is the George Washington text. To provide a more comprehensive count, I have flagged zero articles as [0] and highlighted articles and other relevant words.

“I embrace with [0] great satisfaction the opportunity which now presents itself of congratulating you on the present favourable prospects of our public affairs. The recent accession of the important state of North Carolina to the Constitution of the United States … the rising credit and [0] respectability of our country, the general and [0] increasing good will toward the government of the Union, and the concord, [0] peace, and [0] plenty with which we are blessed are [0] circumstances auspicious in an eminent degree to our national prosperity.” George Washington 1790

The count here, including the zero article is:

Zero = 6

Definite = 11

Indefinite = 1

The Obama text runs as follows:

“Today in America, a teacher spent [0] extra time with a student who needed it, and did her part to lift America’s graduation rate to its highest level in more than three decades. An entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech startup, and did her part to add to the more than eight million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years. An autoworker fine-tuned some of the best, most fuel-efficient cars in the world, and did his part to help America wean itself off [0] foreign oil.” Barack Obama 2014.

The count is:

Zero = 2

Definite = 5

Indefinite = 4

However, this fails to take into account the use of genitives in apostrophe s and possessive pronouns, which serve as proxy definite articles in English, making the use of the definite article marker redundant.

Washington’s text includes three possessive pronouns, all of them, interestingly, second person plural, and no apostrophe s’s, bringing the definite article count up to 14. Obama’s text contains six possessive pronouns and one apostrophe s, bringing his definite article count up to 12. We could add to this the fact that Obama prefers to use the less formal and technically inaccurate ‘America’ rather than ‘the United States.’ Since non-descriptive proper names count as proxies for definiteness in modern English, these too should arguably be included in the tally of definite articles or their proxies. This lifts Obama’s definite article or proxies count to 14, equaling that of George Washington.

The shift therefore is not so much from one kind of article to another, but one involving the increasing use of genitives, possessive pronouns and proper names. Neither does this indicate a decline in either definiteness or formality (the contours of which shift randomly over time and tend to even out), but rather a growing concern with individuality and specificity.

The more interesting and perhaps statistically significant change, may, if we count the articles the way I propose, lie in the use of the indefinite article. Washington uses it once and in a peculiarly old-fashioned sounding manner that has a distinctly definite flavor to it. Obama uses it four times, on each occasion both to generalize and to suggest the picking out of a specific individual (i.e. to combine definite and indefinite). All instances are picked up by subsequent personal pronouns.

This should, of course, also be viewed in the context of the pragmatic performative setting within which a state of the union address occurs. An important part of the ritual, in the modern era, has been to invite members of the general public, who are deemed especially worthy and exemplify key points the president wishes to make, to act as rhetorical props. The president refers to them first as ‘a nurse’ or ‘a firefighter’ or ‘a veteran’ and then by their proper name, as the TV camera pans onto them and they stand up to take a bow.

There is a lot going on here ideologically and it crosses party lines. Individuals are seen first, as if from an aerial distance, as an instance of a particular group, until focused on by the media spotlight, whereupon they are addressed by their proper name and blandished with a series of possessive pronouns. Tellingly, however, individuals who are deemed truly important retain their definite article, ‘the president’, ‘the junior senator from Texas’ etc. Describing Ted Cruz as ‘a senator’ and making him stand up in a crowd would be peculiarly demeaning.

More old-fashioned political discourse tended to focus on groups rather than individuals and on an individual’s status, role and duties as a representative of a group. In times gone by, politicians would be more likely to point rhetorically to ‘the farmer’ as a generic category than pick out an individual farmer as representative of the whole.

Whether this change is a sign of progress or decline is more difficult to tell. In a way, it is just a way of perpetuating injustices by dolling them up in more appealing garb. Calling someone ‘a something’ is like giving them a uniform. It might give them a temporary buzz of self-importance and boost their short-term self-esteem; but after long periods of drilling and bullying and being treated as dispensable, they might come to yearn to be regarded not as ‘a’ something but as ‘the’ individual they truly are. The apparently endearing pat-on-the-back of an “a” tends to tilt towards “just a” and there is nothing just about that. The apparently stuffier and more supercilious language of the founding fathers understood that.

For more on this subject, see:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=16938

https://oudeis2005.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/our-words-of-the-year/