sometimes appears in American English nicknames such as "the Donald", referring to former president Donald Trump, and "the Gipper", referring to former president Ronald Reagan. Partitive article A partitive article is a type of article, sometimes viewed as a type of indefinite article, used with a mass noun such as water, to indicate a non-specific quantity of it. Partitive articles are a class of determiner; they are used in French and Italian in addition to definite and indefinite articles. (In Finnish and Estonian, the partitive is indicated by inflection.) The nearest equivalent in English is some, although it is classified as a determiner, and English uses it less than French uses de. French: Veux-tu du café ? Do you want (some) coffee? For more information, see the article on the French partitive article. Haida has a partitive article (suffixed -gyaa) referring to "part of something or... to one or more objects of a given group or category," e.g., tluugyaa uu hal tlaahlaang "he is making a boat (a member of the category of boats)." Negative article A negative article specifies none of its noun, and can thus be regarded as neither definite nor indefinite. On the other hand, some consider such a word to be a simple determiner rather than an article. In English, this function is fulfilled by no, which can appear before a singular or plural noun: No man has been on this island. No dogs are allowed here. No one is in the room. In German, the negative article is, among other variations, kein, in opposition to the indefinite article ein. Ein Hund – a dog Kein Hund – no dog The equivalent in Dutch is geen: een hond – a dog geen hond – no dog Zero article The zero article is the absence of an article. In languages having a definite article, the lack of an article specifically indicates that the noun is indefinite. Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner. In English, the zero article rather than the indefinite is used with plurals and mass nouns, although the word "some" can be used as an indefinite plural article. Visitors end up walking in mud. Crosslinguistic variation Articles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including Chinese, Japanese,