Staving Joe:
>Essential? Articles serve no essential purpose in a language. They clarify,
>but a distinction is not neccesary.
Are there any languages that mark a definite/indefinite distinction by
means other than articles? I've considered using inflections or word order
to mark it in various conlangs. I suppose there's the wa/ga distinction in
Japanese, but that's restricting a particular grammatical role (the topic)
to definite things, rather than marking definitiveness as such.
Pete Bleackley