The articles in English are so Important for the learner of the
language that we have decided to publish a whole book about them.
Theis by far the commonest word in English, and with a and an
makes up 8.5% of all text. This GuidetoArticles is one of a series of
COBUILD ENGUSH GUIDES to particular areas of difficulty for learners of
English.
Many other languages have articles or similar sons of demonstratives
and their meanings are very similar to their English equivalents. It is
the usage which is different - when to use an article, and when a
possessive; when to be sure to put an article in, and when it is more
natural to leave it out. For example in titles. In French or Italian you
must put a definite article in front of all titles like Professor when you
use them with a name, unless you are actually talking to the person.
In English you usually do not.
When questions of usage arise, the Importance of the COBUllD
evidence becomes clear. This evidence comes from The Bank of
English, a collection of modem English speech and writing drawn
from a variety of sources. The computer files of The Bank of English
currently contain approximately 200 million words. The different
kinds of usage can be retrieved and their Importance assessed; up-todate
tendencies can be observed. Allthe examples in this book (there
are nearly 600) come from this huge database, and this naturally
occurring data gives a real authority to the statements. (Whydid I
write a realauthorityand not just realauthority? Check on page
20. )
If you do not find answers to your problems with the articles in this
book, or if you have any comments or suggestions about how to
improve CoBUILD publications, please write to me.John Sinclair
Editor in Chief: CoBUllD ENGUSH GUIDES
Professor of Modem English Language
University of Birmingham
