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Variation in the English Indefinite Article; by Tim Pulju; From Volume XVI, Number 4, of Psammeticus Quarterly, August 1989. \u2014 The problem of variation in the English indefinite article between the forms \u201ca\u201d and \u201can\u201d has long vexed linguists. In his 1933 classic, \u201cLanguage\u201d, Bloomfield cited this case as an example of free variation at the morphological level, saying, \u201cThere seems to be no principled basis for predicting which form occurs in which contexts.\u201d This solution was accepted by the neo-Bloomfieldians in general. (Read by Trey Jones.)