d.- What you are talking, lad, is nonsense (predicative). Essential contextual-situational characteristic of the articles is their immediate connection with the two types of attributes to the noun. The first type is a «limiting» attribute, which requires the definite article before the noun; the second type is a «descriptive» attribute, which requires the indefinite article or the meaningful absence of the article before the noun. Cf.: Events chronicled in this narrative took place some four years ago. (A limiting attribute) She was a person of strong will and iron self-control. (A descriptive attribute) He listened to her story with grave and kindly attention. (A descriptive attribute) role of descriptive attributes in the situational aspect of articles is particularly worthy of note in the constructions of syntactic «convergencies», ie chained attributive-repetitional phrases modifying the same referent from different angles. Cf.: Longing for a house, a fine and beautiful house, such a house I could never hope to have, flowered into life again.have now come to the third stage of the undertaken analysis of the English articles, namely to their consideration in the light of the oppositional theory. The oppositional examination of any grammatically relevant set of lingual objects is of especial importance from the point of view of the systemic conception of language, since oppositions constitute the basis of the structure of grammatical paradigms.in mind the tacts established at the two previous stages of observation, it is easy to see that oppositionally, the article determination of the noun should be divided into two binary correlations connected with each other hierarchically.opposition of the higher level operates in the whole system of articles. It contrasts the definite article with the noun against the two other forms of article determination of the noun, ie the indefinite article and the meaningful absence of the article. In this opposition the definite article should be interpreted as the strong member by virtue of its identifying and individualizing function, while the other forms of article determination should be interpreted as the weak member, ie the member that leaves the feature in question («identification») unmarked.opposition of the lower level operates within the article subsystem that forms the weak member of the upper opposition. This opposition contrasts the two types of generalization, ie, the relative generalization distinguishing its strong member (the indefinite article plus the meaningful absence of the article as its analogue with uncountable nouns and nouns in the plural) and the absolute, or «abstract» generalization distinguishing the weak member of the opposition (the meaningful absence of the article). described oppositional system can be shown on the following diagram (see Fig. 2).
It is the oppositional description of the English articles that involves the interprctation of the article non-use as the zero form of the article, since the opposition of the positive exponent of the feature to the negative exponent of the feature (ie its absence) realizes an important part of the integral article determination semantics. As for the heterogeneity of functions displayed by the absence of the article, it by no means can be taken as a ground for denying the relevance or expediency of introducing the notion of zero in the article system. As a matter...
