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Dublex articles are mandatory, and mark the number and definiteness of a noun.
Dublex has four numbers: singular (one item), dual (two items), plural (three or more items) and emphatic (any number of items; the specified number of items). The plural is not marked at all on the modified noun, only on the article. The declension for number is regularly formed simply by appending a suffix to an article. The base form is singular, with a '-t' appended for dual, an '-s' for plural, and a '-d' for emphatic.
You should always use as much precision in number as possible when writing Dublex texts intended for machine translation, to ensure accuracy. The use of '-d' without specifying a number is primarily intended for speakers of Asian languages (and other languages that don't mark number) to be able to quickly produce in conversation or online chats.
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Singular
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Dual
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Plural
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Emphatic
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Suffix
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-
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-t
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-s
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-d
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Indefinite
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un
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unt
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uns
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und
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Definite
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- Introductory
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ur
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urt
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urs
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urd
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- Continuing
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al
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alt
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als
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ald
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- General
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il
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ilt
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ils
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ild
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- Partitive
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el
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elt
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els
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eld
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- Negative
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on
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ont
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ons
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ond
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Demonstrative
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- First Person (Proximal)
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evon
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evont
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evons
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evond
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- Second Person (Distal)
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enin
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enint
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enins
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enind
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- Third Person
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etan
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etant
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etans
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etand
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Pronominal
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- First Person (Proximal)
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avon
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avont
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avons
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avond
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- Second Person (Distal)
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anin
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anint
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anins
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anind
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- Third Person
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atan
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atant
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atans
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atand
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The demonstrative articles are formed by prefixing e- to the relevant pronoun: von, nin, tan.
The possessive pronouns ("my, your, their," et al.) are treated as articles in Dublex, and are formed by prefixing a- to the appropriate pronoun.
Ironically a language with only 400 root nouns has 48 articles (12 articles times 4 numbered forms), but these are regularly formed from just 14 morphemes.
Semantics
Since every noun phrase requires an article, the most appropriate of the following meanings needs to be chosen to determine which article to use:
Indefinite
Indefinite Article - Denotes an unspecified or unknown person or object or unspecified people or objects (meaning "some" for the singular, "any" for plural, "any two" for dual): un per, "a person"; unt per, "any two people"; uns per, "any people"; und-ter per, "any three people"; und per, "any number of people".
Definite
Definite Article - Denotes a specified or known person or object.
Introductory Definite Article - Indicates that a noun is being introduced as something to be discussed: ur per, "the person I will be talking about"; urt per, "the two people I will be talking about"; urs per, "the people I will be talking about"; urs-har per, "the four people I will be talking about"; urs per, "the people I will be talking about (I don't know how many of them there are)".
Continuing Definite Article - Indicates that the noun has previously been introduced as something to be discussed: al per, "the person we have been discussing"; alt per, "the two people we have been discussing"; als per, "the people we have been discussing"; ald-pen per, "the five people we have been discussing" [rarely used]; ald per, "the people we have been discussing (I forget how many of them there are)".
Generic Definite Article - Denotes that the noun or noun phrase is concerned with, applicable to, or affects every member of a class or category ("all", "every", "in general"): il per, "every person"; ilt per, "every two people"; ils per, "all people"; ild-ses per, "every six people"; ild per, "all people".
Partitive Definite Article - Denotes that the noun or noun phrase is concerned with just part rather than the whole of every member of a class or category ("some of"): els per, "some of the people". Note the difference between els pen per, "five of the people", and las pen per, "the five people". [?]
Negative Definite Article - The negative article is used when none of a group is intended: na per, "none of the people".
Demonstrative
First-person Demonstrative Article - Indicates that the noun is present or nearby ("near me") or was recently mentioned; typically used in contrast to another similar noun (e.g., "this baby never cries like that one").
Second-person Demonstrative Article - Denotes that the noun is further removed ("near you") or less obvious; typically used in contrast to another similar noun (e.g., "this baby never cries like that one").
Third-person Demonstrative Article - Indicates that the noun is furthest away ("near him") or least obvious; typically used in contrast to one or more other similar nouns. "This book is next to me, that book is next to you, yonder book is next to him."
Note: The demonstrative articles are typically translated with demonstrative *pronouns* in a natural language, but in Dublex the demonstrative articles are used in the exact same syntactic role as other articles, rather than as pronouns. Unlike Modern English, many natural languages have a similar three-tier system of demonstratives: this-that-yonder ("that further"). A few even make more distinctions, which become too difficult to easily translate to (e.g., Malagasy's six demonstratives) while others divide the demonstratives differently (e.g., Setswana's "near you and me", "not far from you and me", "far from you and me"). The current system seems the best compromise.
The articles are always the first word in a noun phrase (the last word being the noun itself, with any modifiers sandwiched between).
Examples:
un celabsistpub, "a team" uns celabsistpub, "some teams"
lo celabsistpub, "the team (that we'll discuss)" los celabsistpub, "the teams (that we'll discuss)"
la celabsistpub, "the team (we're discussing)" las celabsistpub, "the teams (we're discussing)"
li celabsistpub, "a team (in general)" lis celabsistpub, "teams (in general)"
el celabsistpub, "some of the team" els celabsistpub, "some of the teams"
no celabsistpub, "none of the team" nos celabsistpub, "none of the teams"
al celabsistpub, "the Team" als celabsistpub, "the Teams"
vonli celabsistpub, "this team" vonlis celabsistpub, "these teams"
ninli celabsistpub, "that team" ninlis celabsistpub, "those teams"
tanli celabsistpub, "yonder team" tanlis celabsistpub, "yonder teams"
macvon celabsistpub, "my team" macvons celabsistpub, "our team"
macnin celabsistpub, "your team" macnins celabsistpub, "your (pl.) team"
mactan celabsistpub, "his, her team" mactans celabsistpub, "their team"
It would be desirable if articles were optional, since the majority of languages do not have them, but:
 Dublex articles ease the machine translation to languages that require articles (Spanish and English, for instance, have somewhat different rules about when to use the article); Dublex articles provide a convenient way to delimit noun phrases (every noun phrase begins with a prepositioned article, with the exception of noun phrases consisting solely of pronouns), making parsing easier;
Dublex articles provide a convenient way to mark number, easing machine translation to languages with singular, dual and plural number. (For this reason, use of the unnumbered form is discouraged.)
Article Drop Rules
No natural language that requires articles requires them everywhere they are used in Dublex. As a result, the translation program for a natural language needs to contain drop rules to omit articles. For instance, the Dublex les bolmuvper nemia desia sensu les boltuvarmuv ("the sphere-motion-person (in general) desiringly senses the sphere-stick-motion (in general)") becomes "Pitchers love strikes" in English; the Dublex literal translation "Lofton, a Cleveland Indian," drops the article in Spanish. And so forth. Every language with articles has different rules about where and when to use those articles; as a result, the burden of translating the article in a Dublex noun phrase to a target language representation has to fall to the programmer for that language. Correctly translating articles is a difficult programming task, since some languages require agreement in gender and number and since some have contracted forms of articles and common prepositions.
The Dublex article system is designed to represent the most common meanings for which natural languages use articles, not to represent every meaning that natural languages use articles for (just as its lexicon in general is representative only of the most common meanings in language lexicons).
When translating to Mandarin Chinese or Japanese or another language that omits articles, a translation system can simply omit the article altogether in its translations.
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