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The research highlighted in some linguistic works opposes
the theory of existence of three articles in the English language.
According to this theory the English language posseses besides
the definite and the indefinite article also the so-called "zero
article" (that is the meaningful absence of the article before the
noun). In reality some special meaning is acquired in some
special cases by the noun itself which can be easily proved by the
example of the proper names noun class that are used without
articles.
The cases of article usage in the English language are very
different. Beside the distinct grammar function of the article, we
can also observe in many word groups a lot of such cases when
the article has a purely lexical meaning, that is it, in fact, has
become the constituent part of the word and its usage is
practically unmotivated (for example, the usage of the article with
river names or in such names as the Crimea, the Hague).
The main functions of the definite article in English are
to determine and to generalize (визначальна та
узагальнювальна).
When the function of the article is to determine, it shows
that the object, the person or the phenomenon, denoted by a noun,
has some individual features that separate it from other objects,
persons or phenomena of the same class, for example: The boy is
holding a little flag. ((Цей) хлопчик тримає прапорець Being
used in the function to generalize, the definite article gives to the
noun in the singular form the meaning of the generalized notion
— of the whole class of such subjects (persons, phenomena), e.g.:
the pine does not grow here / сосна тут не росте.
The main function of the indefinite article is to classify
(класифікаційна). The indefinite article singles out a separate
object (person) from the class which it belongs to, not ascribing
to it any individual features in comparison with other objects
(persons) of this class. The object is considered not from the point
of view of its individual peculiarities, but as one of the objects

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