On 2006-06-09 13:56, aquila_grande wrote:
> Your examples of other areas having definite article in several
> languages is actially going in fabour of my assumption, not against
> it.
It only shows that the presence of the definite article _may_ be an
areal thing. I don't think the Germanic and Romance article systems in
Western Europe are independent of each other, but that's because of some
characteristic typological features that characterise the "West
European" convergence area and do not occur in the neighbouring areas.
Those features include the coexistence of (preposed) definite articles
with indefinite articles derived from the numeral "one" (ein, a, un,
etc.) and the rise of the category of determiners, of which the articles
are a subcategory. I don't think AA systems are really similar; the
affinity is only superficial. Areal developments don't consist in
unilateral diffusion anyway; the languages of a sprachbund co-evolve in
parallel and influence one another reciprocally.
Piotr