THE DEFINITE ARTICLE CONSPIRACY IN ENGLISH

Teaching the use of the definite article to students of English as a second language is often difficult. Recent descriptions of English do not make the task any easier, for the major modern theoretical approaches to language description have not yet developed a means of adequately accounting for the referential complexities involved in the use of the definite article. American structural and, particularly, generative‐transformational approaches are examined and found to be inadequate. An alternative, non‐formal approach based upon the notion of a “conspiracy of uniqueness” is suggested.