Talk:indefinite article

Some

Some is also an indefinite article. Superm401 22:33, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Put the marble in the blender.
• Put a marble in the blender.
• Put some marbles in the blender.

If 'Henry' is a marble, then you don't need an article - you have a proper name.

203.13.3.90 23:48, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Few, Many, Most

few? many? most? --Connel MacKenzie 02:55, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Put (a few of (the green marbles)) into the blender.
• Put (any of (the green marbles)) into the blender.
• Put (many of (the green marbles)) into the blender.
• Put (most of (the green marbles)) into the blender.
• Put (all of (the green marbles)) into the blender.
• Put (none of (the green marbles)) into the blender.

It seems that 'some of' is not the same as 'some' by itself. These:

• Put all green marbles into the blender.
• Put any green marbles into the blender.
• Put no green marbles into the blender.

Mean something subtly different. They create a class of things to talk about, whereas 'some of' modifies some other class of things. So 'some of' is adjectival, wheras 'some' is an article.

As the article notes, you don't need it for the plural:

• Put green marbles into the blender.

So perhaps 'some green marbles' might be construed not as an article, but as an adjective modifying the unnamed plural 'set of all green marbles'. The problem with that is that by that logic, the article 'a' is likewise not an article at all. The other problem is that 'green marbles' by itself does not mean 'the set of all green marbles'.

203.13.3.94 00:06, 2 December 2019 (UTC)