Articles in Italian grammar

An article is defined as a variable, meaningless part of speech that always precedes a noun or a substantive.

They are short words (consisting of one or two syllables) that cannot stand alone because they have no meaning of their own; syntactically, therefore, articles are closely related to the noun they accompany. Nevertheless, they have very important functions.

Thanks to the article, we can immediately identify the gender and number of the noun itself. There are three categories of articles, which we will see in more detail below. These categories are

1. articoli determinativi (determinative articles) which define a noun in a precise and definite way;
2. articoli indeterminativi (indeterminate articles) which define a noun vaguely and indefinitely;
3. articoli partitivi (partitive articles) which indicate an indefinite part of a whole expressed by a noun.