238 DOI https://doi.org/10.36059/978-966-397-127-8/238-256 THE ENGLISH ARTICLE FROM COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE: TOWARDS A UNIFIED APPROACH Potapenko S. I. INTRODUCTION In the English language the article appears to be the most cognitively-oriented grammatical phenomenon since its traditional explanations have been drawing on various aspects of mental activity: identification, knowledge storage, its activation. The initial understanding of the articles as exponents of definiteness / non-definiteness implies that the addressee matches definite phrases with particular objects, not just any 1 , i.e. captures basic relations between language and perception. This approach is further developed by identifiability theory regarding the definite article as a means of directing the hearer to the referent which he is in a position to identify, i.e. to match with some real-world entity which he knows to exist because he can see it, or infer its existence from something else he has heard 2 . In its turn, the identifying function of the definite article is opposed to the introductory role of the indefinite article which according to the mental space theory is meant to introduce elements into mental spaces 3 while definites point out the elements which are already there 4 . The knowledge-related functions of the English articles are also pinned down to the familiarity / non-familiarity opposition: in this case the definite article is treated as a signal that the entity denoted by a noun phrase is familiar to both speaker and hearer while the indefinite article is considered to be a marker of the absence of such familiarity 5 . This function of the definite article is further elaborated by three familiarity 1 Lyons Ch. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. P. 2. 2 Lyons Ch. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. P. 5–6. 3 Fauconnier G. Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. P. 19. 4 Fauconnier G. Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. P. 20. 5 Christophersen P. The Articles. The Study of their Theory and Use in English. London, etc: Oxford University Press, 1939.