Article. General notion

1.3 The Article in French Grammar

The etymology of the word “article” comes from Latin articulus and it means “small member”.

According to the French linguist Maurice Grevisse article is a word placed before the noun in order to mark that this noun is taken in its complete or incomplete determined meaning; it also serves to indicate the gender and the number of the noun it precedes.
N.B. Grevisse also says in his book “Le bon usage” that the article can be arranged among the adjectives as it serves to introduce the noun.
Thus, comparing with English we see that in the French grammar the article is also placed before the noun. It also has the function of a determiner. But, as distinct from the English article the article in French besides its determination of the noun semantically has the function of determining it from the grammatical point of view. It serves to indicate the noun’s gender and number. Hence it appears the first difference between the articles in English and in French.
There are two types of articles in French: definite(dйfini) and indefinite(indйfini).
Note: it is distinguished often the third type of the article in French – the partitif article, but this one can be relevant by its forms to the definite article and by its meaning it can be belonged to the group of the indefinite article.
So, we find out the second difference between the articles of the two languages. The English and the French Languages have three types of articles and we saw that the first two types coincide in their names: definite and indefinite. Speaking about the third type of articles in both languages it should be noted that in English it is called zero article and in written speech it is rendered by the absence of the article but in French it is called the partitif article which has four forms but we will speak about them in greater length in 1.3.3

1.3.1 The Definite Article in French
Making the parallel between the English and the French grammar we can observe that in the French language articles agree with nouns they determine in gender and number.
The French definite articles (l’article dйfini) are:
le – with nouns in masculine, singular, le garзon;
la – with nouns in feminine, singular, la fille;
l’ – with nouns in masculine and feminine in the singular form
beginning with a vowel or mute h, l’arbre, l’иre, l’habitude, l’homme;
les – with nouns in masculine and feminine in the plural form, les enfants.