Are there three variants of the definite article in Macedonian?

Abstract

According to the Macedonian grammatical tradition there are three variants of the definite article in Standard Macedonian as well as in the majority of Macedonian dialects. The author argues that such an interpretation has a purely formal motivation. At the functional level only the element -ot can be treated as article, while -ov and -on function as postpositive demonstrative clitics. Mutatis mutandis the same is true for the Bulgarian Rodopi dialect.