"some"

some is not an article, it is a determiner

there are 2 subsets of determiners, and those are articles and possessives

a, an, the are the only articles

possessives are words like my, your, his, hers, etc

the other determiners (like some) are not classified into special subsets

But isn't "some" the plural of "a"? Ok, maybe not in that context, but generally.

I don't think, the article is plural but the noun, and "some" is an indefinite quantity word, not an article.

I realize that the traditional articles are only 'a, an, the', but I have come to the conclusion that there are two different, homographic 'some's, and that one of them is the plural indefinite article, as in:

'the eggplant, the eggplants; an eggplant, some (/səm/) eggplants'.

This is in contradistinction to the partitive quantifier:

'Some (/'sum/) eggplants are tasty, others are not.' (pardon my nonstandard phonetic symbols-- I haven't a full set)

In the sentence "everything is caused by some other effect", 'some' (/sum/) is the partitive quantifier.

Not the least advantage of this distinction is that it logically completes the set of articles as well as accurately reflects usage. I leave the etymologies to those more qualified.

Some is a plural of 'a', but it is indefinite. 'A couple' technically means two of something, but it is used in common speech to represent something indeterminate, much like 'some'. Other than that, I agree with the rest of the posters. Keep in mind, joe is a lawyer, and the language of law depends on specific terms. 'Some' just don't cut it, if you know what I mean.

regardless of its use, the word some is a determiner and not an article

'Cause and effect' as a subject would make some article.

I don't pronounce various uses of some in different ways, but thanks for the qualification, Micaw.

Stuh, I thought the use was what determined the part of speech. If I use "some" as someone's name, it becomes a noun.

No disrespect, rufio, but I'll wager you do. As an EFL teacher, I am rather attuned to listening to non-native and native speaker pronunciation, and a LOT of dialogue tapes. Tape yourself talking for a few minutes, and notice the reduction when 'some' /sm/ means 'more than one' as in 'there are some flies in my soup' or 'I have some friends in Japan', compared to the full vowel sound of /sum/ as in 'some flies have four wings' or 'I know some people who will do anything for attention'. Or listen to others in conversation. Unless you and they are habitual orators, you'll reduce the former homograph noticeably.

when words are used properly, they can have different part of speeches. however, a/an are always articles (which are a kind of determiner) and some is always a determiner

proper nouns are an exception in that any string of characters, which doesn't even need to be a word, can be a proper noun

It's not a difference in the phonology so much as a difference in the stress of the sentence of the whole, because of a change of emphasis. But I don't stress the some in "I know some people from Japan" any less than I stress it in "Everything is caused by some other effect", because the "some" is not the important word in either of those sentences, though it serves different purpose. When you say "some flies have wings" you stress the some because that's what's important to what you're saying.

Stuh - if "a" can be an article, so can "some". End of story.

By the way:

'He made $50,000 and then some last year.'

'Some 50 people came to the meeting.'

'That was some fish he caught!"

'I want some more coffee.'

Perhaps I am old school, but to me a word is the part of speech as it is used in a sentence. I would classify 'some' as either a pronoun, adjective, or adverb.

why, just because it is used the same way? ALL determiners are USED the same way!



perhaps they got it wrong, but bottom line is that just because it is USED the same way doesn't mean it belongs to the same part of speech.

Then what does determine the part of speech words belong to? Is it all determined to be one way because "they" said so? What about people who actually use the language? Don't we get a say?

Rufio - I again say it all depends on how a word is used to determine its part of speech.

berm, while the usage of a word is the most obvious way to classify it, words do have other properties...which means that there are other ways to categorize them, and indeed many words have been classified by their meaning as well as other properties. I am baffled at how you can deny this! anyway, I think I'm about done with this subject...classifications merely exist for communication, and this has digressed beyond communication to argument and that's just silly.

I agree that sentence stress enters into the equation-- I won't run through the paradigm, but any word in the sentence 'some dogs are black' could easily carry sentence stress. But if you will listen to yourself (or to some other folks), I think you will hear /sm/ in 'I know some people from Japan' and /səm/ in 'everything is caused by some other effect'.

However, I really don't want to belabour the issue. There's no right answer: Stu is right because 'some' is not on the Article List; you're right because stress is an ongoing variable which is a complex dependent on each context. What is interesting to me is:

(1) the consistency of the pronunciation of 'some' (/sm/) as the unstressed plural indefinite article, which suggests that at least the differentiation of the word is in process in the language.

(2) the way in which it completes the article set (an egg, the egg, some eggs, the eggs). As both a teaching device and as a bit of language analysis, it immensely simplifies and clarifies this particular grammar point to separate the 'some' that means 'more than one' from the 'some' that means 'not all'. Much of my ongoing concern is finding the 'rules' to which the language adheres and teaching them, while eliminating or minimizing those (like the 'some/any' declarative/interrogative 'dichotomy') that students have learned but which produce as many exceptions as examples in authentic language.

The two 'some's I am calling homographs are one entry in Webster's ('1some'-- and if you have a Webster's, note the pronunciation comment). I would also be interested in your view on 'that', which are entries '1that' and '2that' in Webster's-- 'that' /thæt/, the relatively stressed demonstrative adjective/pronoun, and 'that' /thət/, the conjunction/relative pronoun. I find that the individual pronunciations and the difference between the two is much more consistent than the dictionary pronunciations would suggest. I think that they are, in spite of their common origin, now two different words that share little but orthography, and this is the direction in which the two 'some's are evolving.

And thanks for making this an interesting discussion-- it helps me clarify and correct myself also!

I think I see what you are saying - but it doesn't have anything to do with phonemes. All of our vowels get shortened or turned into shwas when the syllable is sufficiently unstressed, so [səm] could indeed become [sm] if it were said quickly enough. The same goes for [thaet] versus [thət]. And I don't doubt that the usage of the word and its role in the sentence plays a huge role in how much stress gets placed on it. "Some" as an article probably recieves less stress than another "some". In, fact in the sentence I just wrote, in which "some" is used as a noun, it probably gets sufficiently stressed to say that it would be transcribed as [s^m] (I don't have the IPA characters either ). But you'll notice I'm using phonetic notation and not phonemic notation. Phonemes only exist on the level that we're aware of them and use them purposefully. All of these version reduce to the phonemic representations /səm/ and /thaet/, just as the sounds in "letter" (flap) and "kitten" (glottal stop) and "top" (aspirated) and "stop" (unaspirated) all coalesce into the phoneme /t/ even though they are all quite different. By comparison, the "some" issue is frivolous. So the different pronounciations you mention may have resulted from differences in usage, but our usage of those pronounciations is not based directly on it.

Stuh, language does not exist except in the way it is spoken. If you think words have properties that are destinct from usage, feel free to elaborate. But as the users of language created the language and give it any meaning it might have, I don't see how any such properties could exist.