Definite article (omission) in British, Maltese, and other Englishes

Click here to view record
Main author: Krug, Manfred
Other authors: Lucas, Christopher
Format: Journal Article           
Online access: Click here to view record


id eprints-24725
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description This article investigates factors that underlie the discrepancies in article omission between Maltese English (MaltE) and British English (BrE), with reference to further ENL, ESL and EFL varieties. We investigate seasons of the year, ordinal numbers, languages, proper nouns, titles, institutions and common nouns. Our sources include text corpora, and web and questionnaire-based data. Our key proposal is that MaltE has innovated a rule that the definite article may be omitted when the uniqueness or identifiability of a referent is salient in context. Furthermore, MaltE avoids the definite article commonly when the referent is generic rather than definite. The resulting MaltE system is regulated according to fewer parameters than in BrE, but more consistently.
format Journal Article
author Krug, Manfred
author_facet Krug, Manfred
Lucas, Christopher
authorStr Krug, Manfred
author_letter Krug, Manfred
author2 Lucas, Christopher
author2Str Lucas, Christopher
title Definite article (omission) in British, Maltese, and other Englishes
publisher De Gruyter
publishDate 2018
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/24725/

Similar items