Collin's Cobuild English Guides 3: Articles

Description

The articles in English are so Important for the learner of thelanguage that we have decided to publish a whole book about them.Theis by far the commonest word in English, and with a and anmakes up 8.5% of all text. This GuidetoArticles is one of a series ofCOBUILD ENGUSH GUIDES to particular areas of difficulty for learners ofEnglish.Many other languages have articles or similar sons of demonstrativesand their meanings are very similar to their English equivalents. It isthe usage which is different - when to use an article, and when apossessive; when to be sure to put an article in, and when it is morenatural to leave it out. For example in titles. In French or Italian youmust put a definite article in front of all titles like Professor when youuse 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 COBUllDevidence becomes clear. This evidence comes from The Bank ofEnglish, a collection of modem English speech and writing drawnfrom a variety of sources. The computer files of The Bank of Englishcurrently contain approximately 200 million words. The differentkinds of usage can be retrieved and their Importance assessed; up-todatetendencies can be observed. Allthe examples in this book (thereare nearly 600) come from this huge database, and this naturallyoccurring data gives a real authority to the statements. (Whydid Iwrite a realauthorityand not just realauthority? Check on page20. )If you do not find answers to your problems with the articles in thisbook, or if you have any comments or suggestions about how toimprove CoBUILD publications, please write to me.John SinclairEditor in Chief: CoBUllD ENGUSH GUIDESProfessor of Modem English LanguageUniversity of Birmingham