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Novvocu articles are mandatory, and mark the definiteness of a noun. The articles are always the first word in a noun phrase (the last word being the noun itself, with any modifiers sandwiched between).
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Form
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Indefinite
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un
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Definite
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- Introductory
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al
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- Continuing
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-
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- General
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em
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- Partitive
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ir
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- Negative
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ot
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The continuing article is a null form -- in other words, if the article is omitted, the default meaning is that of a continuing article.
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"; un permen, "any people".
Definite
The definite articles denote a specified or known person or object:
Introductory Definite Article - Indicates that a noun is being introduced as something to be discussed: al per, "the person I will be talking about"; al permen, "the people I will be talking about".
Continuing Definite Article - Indicates that the noun has previously been introduced as something to be discussed: per, "the person we have been discussing"; permen, "the people we have been discussing".
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"): em per, "every person". Always semantically considered plural.
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"): ir per, "some person"; ir permen, "some people".
Negative Definite Article - The negative article is used when none of a group is intended: ot per, "no person". Always semantically consider singular.
It would be desirable if articles were optional, since the majority of languages do not have them, but Novvocu 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). Even Japanese, which doesn't have articles, does use particles differently (ga vs. wa, for instance), depending on the definiteness of the subject.
Article Drop Rules
No natural language that requires articles requires them everywhere they are used in Novvocu. As a result, the translation program for a natural language needs to contain drop rules to omit articles. For instance, the Novvocu 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 Novvocu 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 Novvocu 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 Novvocu 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 pronoun system is representative only of the most common meanings in language lexicons).
When translating to Mandarin Chinese or another language that omits articles, a translation system can simply omit the article altogether in its translations.
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