Articles are words (or clitics) which serve to introduce and define noun. In English, the articles encode definiteness; they are 'the' (definite) and 'a' (indefinite), and the silent article used with plural indefinite nouns (compare "the cat, a cat, the cats, _ cats").
In French, articles also encode gender, number, and countability.
| Masculine | Feminine | |
|---|---|---|
| Singular | le | la |
| Plural | les | les |
| Partitive | du | de la |
| Partitive plural | des | des |
Besides definite, indefinite, and partitive articles, there are also zero (silent) and negative articles. The English word "no" can be used this way, e.g. "no cat."
More complex articles[]
In some languages, the article functions as a clitic stem to which other syntactic information can be affixed. This means that the article can also include information about spatial relation, case, or any number of other factors.