Артикли в современном английском языке

В.С. Матюшенков

АРТИКЛИ
В СОВРЕМЕННОМ
АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

Учебное пособие

Москва
Издательство «ФЛИНТА»
2022

УДК 811.111'367.632(075.8)
ББК 81.132.1-2я73
М35

Матюшенков В.С.
   Артикли в современном английском языке : учебное пособие / 
В.С. Матюшенков. — Москва : ФЛИНТА, 2022. — 392 с. — 
ISBN 978-5-9765-4908-1. — Текст : электронный.

   Очень трудно овладеть полезным, но весьма сложным умением 
выбора правильного артикля. У учащегося могут возникнуть проблемы, поскольку подбор нужного артикля зависит как от значения, 
так 
и 
от 
грамматической 
формы 
существительного, 
им 
определяемого. Материал, изложенный в книге поможет разрешить 
эту грамматическую задачу. Он сопровождается многочисленными 
примерами из современной художественной литературы, журналов 
и газет. Пособие предусматривает повторение и закрепление 
основных правил употребления артиклей. Для контроля усвоения 
грамматического материала предлагаются тесты и упражнения 
различной степени трудности. В конце книги есть ключи, благодаря 
которым учащиеся смогут самостоятельно проверить свои знания, 
проанализировать ошибки и выработать навыки употребления 
артиклей.
Для студентов вузов, преподавателей и всех изучающих английский язык.

Learn to master the useful but tricky skill of how to choose the right 
article. As a non-native speaker of English, you may have trouble 
with articles because unlike true adjectives, the choice of what 
article to use is dependent on both the meaning and the grammatical 
form of the particular noun they modify. The book helps you untangle 
this grammar puzzle with explanations of how they should be treated 
and used. And of course you will get a lot of exercise opportunities to 
practice your new skills.

УДК 811.111’367.632(075.8)
ББК 81.132.1-2я73

ISBN 978-5-9765-4908-1 
© Матюшенков В.С., 2022
© Издательство «ФЛИНТА», 2022

М35

Contents

Abbreviations  ....................................................................................................5

The English Articles  ..........................................................................................6

Introduction  .......................................................................................................8

I. The Functions (Structural Meanings) of Articles
with Common Nouns  ....................................................................................11
1. The Indefi nite Article  ...........................................................................11
2. The Defi nite Article  .............................................................................26
3. The Absence of the Article  ..................................................................44

II. The Use of Articles with Countable Nouns  ............................................54
1. General Rules of the Use of Articles with Countable Nouns  ..............54
2. Certain Peculiarities in the Use of the Defi nite Article
with Countable Nouns  .........................................................................77
3. The Generic Function of the Defi nite Article  ......................................77
4. The Use of Articles with Countable Nouns
in Some Syntactic Relations  ................................................................82

III. The Use of Articles with Uncountable Noun  ........................................94
1. The Use of Articles with Uncountable Abstract Nouns  .......................94
2. The Use of Articles with Uncountable Concrete Nouns
(Names of Materials)  .........................................................................101

IV. The Use of Articles with Some Semantic Groups of Nouns  ...............103
1. Names of Parts of the Day  .................................................................103
2. Names of Seasons  ..............................................................................106
3. Names of Meals  .................................................................................108
4. Certain Countable Nouns in Their Phraseological Use  .....................110

V. The Use of Articles with Nouns Denoting Objects
or Notions Which Are Considered to Be Unique  ......................................114

VI. The Use of Articles with Proper Nouns ...............................................116
1. The Use of Articles with Names of Persons  ......................................117
2. The Use of Articles with Geographic Names  ....................................120
3. The Use of Articles with Miscellaneous Proper Names  ....................125

VII. The Place of Articles  ...........................................................................131

APPENDIXES  ..............................................................................................135
APPENDIX 1. Lists of Nouns and Phrases Often Used 
with the Defi nite Article  .........................................................................135
APPENDIX 2. Lists of Words and Phrases Often Used
with the Indefi nite Article .......................................................................223
APPENDIX 3. Lists of Words and Phrases Often Used
without any Articles  ...............................................................................328

Practical Work .............................................................................................336
 
English Articles Exercises  ......................................................................336
 
The English Articles Final Test  ..............................................................368

Answers  ........................................................................................................375
 
The Answers to the Exercises  ................................................................375
 
The Answers to the Final Test  ................................................................382

Bibliography  .................................................................................................385

Abbreviations

Am 
— American
Br 
— British
c  
— countable
col 
— colloquial
derog  
— derogatory
e.g.  
— for example
esp. 
— especially
etc. 
— etcetera; and so on
euph  
— euphemistic
fml 
— formal
humor  
— humorous
i.e. 
— id est; that is
lit 
— literary
obs  
— obsolete
p 
— plural
pomp  
— pompous
s 
— singular
the + p / s — the is obligatory
(the, (u))  — the is common but not obligatory
u 
— uncountable

THE ENGLISH ARTICLES

This is perhaps the hardest issue for second language learners. 
If you don’t speak English as your fi rst language, it may take 
a long time for you to master English articles and acquire native 
speakers’ profi ciency on the subject. If not sure about which article 
to use in a particular context, you can ask native speakers of 
English for help. However, don’t expect them to be able to explain 
why, unless they have studied linguistics, because it’s more of 
matter of intuition and convention than rules. The rules can seem 
confusing even to native English speakers! To master article usage, 
it is necessary to do a great deal of reading, notice how articles are 
used in published texts, and take notes on how to use articles in 
writing. Learning and consciously applying a few basic principles 
can help you improve your article use signifi cantly. With time and 
a lot of practice, using articles correctly will become second nature. 
Having said that, we have some guidelines that may be useful for 
you below.
What word appears most often in English? It’s “the”, also 
known as the defi nite article accounting for 7% of all words used. 
It is the most commonly used word in written English, but the most 
commonly spoken word is I, followed, in order, by you, the, and a. 
So the indefi nite article “a”, is also among the top 10 most frequent 
words in English. They both comprise about 8.5 per cent of all the 
words in any text. According to Professor Elka Todeva of the SIT 
Graduate Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont, “a” and “the” are also 
some of the most diffi cult words for learners to fi gure out how to use 
without some assistance.
In English, there are two main ways in which you can use a noun 
group. We can use it to refer to someone or something knowing that 
the person we are speaking to understands which person or thing we 
are talking about. This can be called the specifi c way of referring to 
someone or something.
Alternatively, we can use a noun group to refer to someone or 
something of a particular type, without saying which person or thing 

we mean. This can be called the general way of referring to someone 
or something.
In order to distinguish between these two ways of using a noun 
group, we use a special class of words called determiners or 
markers. Here is the list of specifi c determiners: the, this, that, these, 
those, his, her, its, our, their. Here is a list of general determiners: 
a, all, an, another, any, both, each, either, enough, every, few, little, 
many, more, most, much, either, neither, no, other, several, some.

INTRODUCTION

The article is a structural word specifying the noun. Hence the 
absence of the article, as opposed to its presence, also specifi es the 
noun and has signifi cance. In the most simple terms an article is 
a way of letting the listener or speaker know that a noun is either 
unspecifi c or specifi c.
The defi nite article has developed from the Old English 
demonstrative pronoun meaning that. In Old English this article 
could be masculine, feminine, or neuter, and had fi ve case forms 
as a singular and four as a plural. The indefi nite article, which 
originates from the Old English word meaning one, has two forms: 
a before words beginning with a consonant sound and an before 
words beginning with a vowel sound.
We use a before words such as “European” or “university” 
which sound like they start with a consonant. Also we use a before 
letters and numbers which sound like they begin with a consonant, 
such as “U”, “J”, “1”, or “9”. It is the sound not the spelling which is 
important. Use an before words such as “an hour” which sound like 
they start with a vowel even if the fi rst letter is a consonant. Also 
use an before letters and numbers which sound like they begin with 
a vowel, such as “F” or “8”.
That novel has a one-dimensional heroine.
A user can access his account with a password.
We also use “an” before abbreviations that begin with a vowel 
sound: an M.A., an M.Sc., an MP, etc.
In most English words starting with “h”, h is pronounced 
consonant. The exceptions are the words: heir, honest, honor, and 
hour and their derivatives. So we say: a horror fi lm, a happy ending, 
etc. but we say: an heir, an honest politician, etc.
Some words such as “herb” and “hospital” are more complicated 
because they are pronounced differently in different English accents. 
In most American accents the “h” in “herb” is silent, so Americans 
usually say “an herb” while many British say “a herb”. In some 

British accents the “h” in “hospital” is silent, so some British will 
say “an hospital” instead of “a hospital”.
He planted an herb garden in the yard.
Both a and an are possible before words beginning with h in an 
unaccented syllable: historic(al), historian, hotel, and hypothesis, for 
example; in modern usage, a is preferred in such examples, but an 
is also acceptable, esp. in combinations such as an historic occasion 
and an historical novel. The practice of writing an before such words 
begins to die out. Nowadays it survives primarily before the words 
historical and historic.
In 1930s or thereabouts, an historical review was pleased to 
print a large collection of children’s howlers. (FB)
In dealing with the use of articles it will be necessary to divide 
all cases into two groups which may be called “the grammatical use 
of articles” and “the traditional use of articles”.
The grammatical use of articles is dependent on the character of 
the noun, i.e. the functions (structural meanings) of the articles are 
connected with the different classes into which nouns fall. Besides, 
the choice of articles is sometimes infl uenced by the syntactical 
relations in which the noun occurs.
The traditional use of articles is found in numerous set phrases, 
in names of the countries and so on and although the use of articles 
is based on tradition and cannot be accounted for grammatically, 
such traditional use of articles should be treated by grammar.
In order to describe the functions of the articles we need some 
classifi cation of nouns upon which our description can be based. 
First, we should divide all nouns into common nouns and proper 
names. The use of articles with proper names should be treated 
separately. With common nouns the use of articles is dependent on 
the relation of nouns to the category of countability.
We will divide them into two groups.
The fi rst group will be concerned with nouns having reference 
to the category of countability and can be subdivided into countable 
nouns (such as concrete nouns (man, pen, star) and abstract nouns 
(question, answer)) and uncountable nouns (such as concrete nouns 

(water, coal) and abstract nouns (freedom, time, love)). Among the 
most common uncountable nouns are: abuse, accommodation, 
advertising, advice, baggage, behavior, brains, bread, chaos, 
clothing, customs, damage, equipment, evidence, expenditure, fi sh 
(much, many), fruit (much, many), fun, furniture, garbage, goods, 
hair, homework, information, jewelry, knowledge, laughter, leafage, 
leisure, lightning, linen, lodgings, looks, luck, luggage, lumber, 
machinery, mail, minority, money, news, oats, permission, poetry, 
pollution, progress, refuse, remorse, research, scenery, shrubbery, 
smoke, spaghetti, spinach, stairs, timber, traffi c, transport, 
transportation, travel, violence, wages, waste, weather, work.
Note: Some nouns have the same singular and plural forms: 
species, series, deer, pike, swine, trout, salmon, cod, sheep, dozen, 
pair, score. Articles and pronouns used before such words help to 
defi ne their number.
That species is rare.
Those species are rare.
The second group is concerned with nouns having no reference 
to the category of countability (such as concrete nouns the sun, the 
world and abstract nouns the past, the plural).
As will be shown, the division of nouns into concrete and 
abstract ones is of importance for the use of articles only in the 
category of uncountable nouns.
We can determine which article to place in front of almost 
any noun by answering the following three questions: is the noun 
countable or uncountable? is it singular or plural? is it defi nite or 
indefi nite?
If the noun is defi nite, it always takes the article the; if the noun 
is indefi nite it never takes the article the.

I. THE FUNCTIONS (STRUCTURAL MEANINGS) 
OF ARTICLES WITH COMMON NOUNS
✧

1. The Indefi nite Article

The indefi nite article is used when the speaker believes that 
the listener does not have to be told the identity of the referent. We 
use the indefi nite article as a way of demonstrating that we are not 
referring to a specifi c item or person but rather talking in a more 
general sense. So we often use the indefi nite article when we are 
introducing a particular thing (or person) into conversation or text 
for the fi rst time if we cannot assume that our listener or reader 
knows which particular thing we are talking about.
After weeks of looking, we fi nally bought a house.
I read it in a magazine.
Have you got a car?
I had a pain in my leg.
You may take a book.
I saw a horse.
I met a girl.
Come and see me on a Monday.
He drives a Ford.
A man overboard!
We always have a concern that if we succeed in getting children 
out of one sector, they will be forced into something worse — and 
sexual traffi cking is something worse. (CSM)
There were two butchers, a grocer’s, Jack Richardson, Green’s 
the papershop, Noakes, the ironmonger, a fi sh-and-chip shop, and 
fi ve pubs. (EC)

Every village had a sweetshop. Ours was run by two oldfashioned sisters, the Miss Fares. (EC)
Also we can use the indefi nite article to describe things and 
people, give information about something that has already been 
introduced. This use is common with verbs like “be”, “seem”, 
“look”, or “sound”, or where the description immediately follows 
the noun.
This seemed a logical approach.
That sounds like an excuse to me.
It’s a pity you can’t come.
He’s a friend of mine (= one of my friends).
Murmansk is a port in the North.
Give me a pencil.
There is a book on the table.
His account of the crime was (a) complete fi ction.
I’m not speaking as a Vice President who is trying to spin you on 
behalf of an Administration that I was proud to serve, and has done 
great things for this country. (RD)

1. With countable nouns, both concrete and abstract, the 
indefi nite article is used when we want to name an object (thing, 
person, animal, abstract notion), to state what kind of object is 
meant:
Outside, the studio lot is surprisingly sedate. A golf cart whirs 
past. A colleague brings him a single shot of espresso.
A gentleman has called to see you.
She caught a butterfl y in her net.
I’d like an egg for tea.
There’s a realization that without an economy, Pakistan is not 
going to have a military. (T)
This function may be called the nominating function. It is the 
main function of the indefi nite article with countable nouns.
But at the same time, owing to its origin from the numeral one, 
the indefi nite article always implies the idea of oneness and is used 
only before nouns in the singular (including such words as alms,