The BMJ, the definite article

The BMJ, the definite article.

The journal will be 175 years old next year. During that time it has had four names: the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal (1840-52), the Association Medical Journal (1853-56), theBritishMedical Journal (1857-1988), andBMJ (1988-2014). Now it gets a fifth, with the inclusion in its name of the definite article. The journal formerly known as BMJ will now be formally known as The BMJ. This ...

The Definite Article: Code and Context

Numerous grammatical items can only be understood if the context is taken into account. In order to provide a formal treatment of this problem, we introduce the nonon of knowledge base into linguistics. After having worked out a hard core system of rules for analysing numerals, definite articles, and indefinite articles, we give a thorough study of the French singular definite article le. This ...

The definite article, accessibility, and the construction of discourse referents*

In this article, I argue that neither of the two main approaches to definiteness, familiarity or unique identifiability, provide necessary or sufficient conditions for the use of the definite article in English. I propose instead that the basic meaning of the article is to signal the accessibility of a discourse referent, more specifically, the availability of an access path through a configura...

The Reduplicative Nature of the Bulgarian Definite Article

The (socio-)linguistic cycle of Definite Article Reduction

Dialect speakers in the North of England use vowel-less forms of the definite article (the) which are unattested in English varieties elsewhere and have been termed Definite Article Reduction (DAR). Previous research on DAR has provided detailed phonological descriptions, but less insight has been gained into other aspects of DAR like its emergence and the northern pattern of occurrence. I demo...