ARTICLE.
The article, αρθρα, partakes of the nature of pronouns; and in apposition or concord with another name, either active or substantive, determines it to be a substantive, or the name of a substance, with its identity and number.
There are two sorts of articles, viz. the and an; an becomes a or any before a consonant, and either of them being placed in apposition to an active convertible name, convert it into a substantive, as to form into a form, to chase into a chase. And, names being first formed in the plural number, both these then stood as signs of the singular number; but since plural names have been taken as singular, and new signs have been added thereto to form plurals, the is also put in apposition to plural names, to indentify the person or thing meant or spoken of.
Example; Some may still imagine the signification of an article or a letter, and perhaps more compound names to be indefinable, and the article to be useless; tho’ the definitions here given thereof evidently shew the contrary; and the Greeks and Romans not only made use of the genders ο, η, το, and hic, hæc, hoc, but also of a declining article at the end of nouns, as the Welsh did un and yr, which last before a consonant sunk into y the, inflecting with the following radical consonant; and other nations have made use of the article. To dispute the utility of the article seems therefore absurd, but it may be a dispute, whether either determine any particular individual, or only some third person alluded to, pointed at, meant or spoken of in discourse, or in the line of possession; ο, η, το, hic, hæc, hoc, this, that, yr, un, le, ein and der expressing as much.