CHAPTER XIV. THE ARTICLES. s. 336. In the generality of grammars the definite article _the_, and the indefinite article _an_, are the very first parts of speech that are considered. This is exceptionable. So far are they from being essential to language, that, in many dialects, they are wholly wanting. In Greek there is no indefinite, in Latin there is neither an indefinite nor a definite article. In the former language they say [Greek: aner tis]=_a certain man_: in the Latin the words _filius patris_ mean equally _the son of the father_, _a son of a father_, _a son of the father_, or _the son of a father_. In Moeso-Gothic and in Old Norse, there is an equal absence of the indefinite article; or, at any rate, if there be one at all, it is a different word from what occurs in English. In these the Greek [Greek: tis] is expressed by the Gothic root _sum_. Now, as it is very evident that, as far as the sense is concerned, the words _some man_, _a certain man_, and _a man_, are, there or thereabouts, the same, an exception may be taken to the statement that in Greek and Moeso-Gothic there is no indefinite article. It may, in the present state of the argument, be fairly said that the words _sum_ and [Greek: tis] are pronouns with a certain sense, and that _a_ and _an_ are no more; consequently, that in Greek the indefinite article is [Greek: tis], in Moeso-Gothic _sum_, and in English _a_ or _an_, A distinction, however, may be made. In the expression [Greek: aner tis] (_anaer tis_)=_a certain man_, or _a man_, and in the expression _sum mann_, the words _sum_ and [Greek: tis] preserve their natural and original meaning; whilst in _a man_ and _an ox_ the words _a_ and _an_ are used in a secondary sense. These words, as is currently known, are one and the same, the _n_, in the form _a_, being ejected through a euphonic process. They are, moreover, the same words with the numeral _one_; {282} Anglo-Saxon, _['a]n_; Scotch, _ane_. Now, between the words _a man_ and _one man_, there is a difference in meaning; the first expression being the most indefinite. Hence comes the difference between the English and the Moeso-Gothic expressions. In the one the word _sum_ has a natural, in the other the word _an_ has a secondary power. The same reasoning applies to the word _the_. Compared with _a man_, the words _the man_ are very definite. Compared, however, with the words _that man_, they are the contrary. Now, just as _an_ and _a_ have arisen out of the numeral _one_, so has _the_ arisen out of the demonstrative pronoun _thaet_, or at least from some common root. It will be remembered that in Anglo-Saxon there was a form _the_, undeclined, and common to all the cases of all the numbers.