On the linguistic status of the German article

This paper is dedicated to the critical analysis of the present points of views about the lexical and grammatical essence of the German article. The author adduces the arguments for the inability of the most common opinion, pursuant to the German article is described as an analytical tool, which doesn't have its own lexical meaning. It is proved that the analyzed linguistic unit is an independent pronominal word, which forms a special lexical and grammatical class of deictic words with the demonstrative, possessive and indefinite pronouns. The German native speakers use this word class for the realization of the special semantic category of correlation. The gist of this category is that the same noun can be used for the nomination of different essences, such as an only possible object, a class of the similar objects, all members of the same class or subclass of objects or a concept. For all that, the choice of one or another article is regulated with the realized type of correlation. Grammatical characteristics of the German article, that is the distribution, form change and semantic function, identify it as an adjective, which holds a peripheral position in the field structure of this part of speech.