"Some": an emergent article?

[cema]

Was in a cafe today, heard the waiter say: "I will be back with some menu".

Normal usage to me, but a friend (lives outside of the US) was amused. Like, will she just choose a random menu? Anyway, it does seem that "some" is often taking place of "a" in spoken American English. But does it qualify as an article? I wonder if linguists have anything to say about this.

Comments

[cema.livejournal.com]

Native speakers say it all the time, really. "Give me some this or that". Interestingly, it seems (but I am not sure) as though it does not matter if the noun is countable or uncountable. Of course, "give me some salt" and "give me some menu" use different meanings of the word "some", but perhaps they become mingled now.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grisha/]

You hit the nail on the head with countable and uncountable, though I would probably prefer to say "words that have a plural form" for "countable" and "words that don't" for "uncountable." That way people can't make stupid comments like "what about 'money'?"