Functions of the indefinite article before the nouns considered to be unique in German and English languages

This article presents the results of studying the functional purpose of the indefinite article before the nouns considered to be unique in the German and English languages. A brief description of the German and English indefinite article from the perspective of different linguists is given. The German article should be attributed to functional words without singling it out as a separate group of parts of speech. The English article is considered either as a morpheme-like element, or as a structural part of speech that has selfsufficiency. The indefinite article serves as a means of highlighting the most significant information in the message. A comparative analysis of the use of this type of article before unique phenomena, the material for which were examples from the German and English linguistic corpus, showed that the function of metaphorical transference in the indefinite article is present in both languages studied, but in English the number of cases of replacing a definite article with an indefinite one before unique concepts in connection with metaphorisation is rather few. In most cases, the presence of an indefinite article is explained from a grammatical point of view: it is influenced by an adjective before a noun or an attributive clause. Also, its use before unique objects depends on the speaker's intention. An indefinite article before the nouns considered to be unique in German can serve as a signal of metaphorical transference, depending on the context.