In the sentence "President Obama created a program to help the poor", what is the grammatical term for the "a"?

December 8, 2009 9:22 AM

In the sentence "President Obama created a program to help the poor", what is the grammatical term for the "a"?

Someone at work just asked me this and I don't have a clue. Anyone have any idea?

posted by tracert to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

Best answer: It's an article.
posted by logicpunk at 9:24 AM on December 8, 2009

Best answer: It's an article.
posted by scarykarrey at 9:24 AM on December 8, 2009

Best answer: It's an indefinite article.
posted by redfoxtail at 9:24 AM on December 8, 2009

Best answer: Indefinite article.
posted by widdershins at 9:25 AM on December 8, 2009

Response by poster: Stupendous, thanks so much all!
posted by tracert at 9:31 AM on December 8, 2009

Oddly enough, I know this is an article because of the Fight Club quote:
"Of course it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article "a dildo", never "your dildo."
posted by disillusioned at 10:28 AM on December 8, 2009 [4 favorites]

By the way, it's also a determiner, as articles in English are a (proper) subset of the set of determiners. And note that although it's typically referred to as the "indefinite" article, it doesn't always indicate indefiniteness. If someone asks you what you're doing and you say "I'm looking for a dog," it might mean that you are shopping for a new pet, but you could also mean that you've lost your family pet (i.e. a specific, definite dog) and are trying to find him.
posted by tractorfeed at 11:11 AM on December 8, 2009

It's also an adjective (=determiner), as all articles (the only other one in English is "the") are adjectives.
posted by feelinggood at 6:55 PM on December 8, 2009

To feelinggood and the OP: Don't forget "an"! Indefinite article adjectives: a, an, the.
posted by hollygirl at 9:13 PM on December 8, 2009

Linguists do not categorize determiners as adjectives (and I'm pretty sure that prescriptivist grammar books wouldn't either) because the two categories function differently and are distributed differently. You can have multiple adjectives modifying one noun, but not multiple determiners, for example. Maybe feelinggood is thinking of quantifiers like "some" or "nine" or "many"?

Finally, "an" and "a" are the same word; we just happen to have an orthographic convention that reflects a pronunciation change (much like le and l' in French).
posted by tractorfeed at 1:43 AM on December 9, 2009