Grammatical Articles, Proper Names, and Logical Quantification
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- Most Japanese seem to have trouble with use of articles ("a",
"the", "some") in English. Of course this is due to the lack of a
similar construct in the Japanese language.
- Compare demonstrative adjectives like "this" and "that".
Japanese have the "a-so-ko-do" words, so have little trouble.
Actually, English speakers have more trouble with Japanese because
English has two distances, "this" and "that", while Japanese has
three "kono", "sono", and "ano".
- Some Japanese scientists say that they can write scientific papers
more easily in English, because it is "more logical". This is in
part due to articles!
- Articles are closely related to the fundamental logical notion of
"quantification": to what set does a proposition apply?
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