Page:A simplified grammar of the Danish language.djvu/48

36 the rule of the ancient mother-tongue, originally wrote Mand hin, 'man that;' Hus hit, 'house that;' Börn hine, 'children those.' And as in Icelandic these demonstrative pronouns, when appended to a noun to give it its definite inflected formm, lost the h, and appeared as the affixes inn, (m.), in (f.), itt (n.), &c., so in Danish the pronoun has become converted into en or n (m. f.), et or t (n.), &c., and now constitutes the simple noun-article. The intermediate stage between the older Mand hin, and the modern Manden, 'the man,' was Mandhen.

In their present form these affixes have the precise meaning of the definite article "the," but can only be thus used when the noun is not qualified by an adjective; as, Gutten er min Broder, "The boy is my brother;" Huset er hans Kones, "The house is his wife's;" Börnene lege i Haven med Hunden, "The children are playing in the garden with the dog."

The independent adjective-article is:—




 * den, c. g. || || det, n. ||  || de, pl. of both genders.
 * }
 * }

This article is the unaccentuated representative of the demonstrative pronoun dēn, dēt, dē, derived, like the affix noun-form of the article, from the Old Northern demonstrative pronoun hinn (m.), hin (f.), hitt (n.), hinir (pl. m.), hinar (pl. f.), hin (pl. n.), 'that.'

It must directly precede the adjective which qualifies the noun; as, den lange Gut, 'the tall boy;' det höje Træ, 'the high tree;' de små Börn, 'the little children.'

The independent adjective-article may be used in the