Determiners
Determiners form a class of words that occur in the left-most position inside noun phrases. They thus precede nouns, as well as any adjectives that may be present.
The most common determiners are the and a/an (these are also called the definite aticle and indefinite article).
Here are some more determiners:
- any taxi
- that question
- those apples
- this paper
- some apple
- whatever taxi
- whichever taxi
As these examples show, determiners can have various kinds of 'specifying' functions. For example, they can help us to identify which person or thing the noun refers to. So, if in a conversation with you I talk about that man you will know who I am talking about. In the following examples the determiners specify a quantity:
- all examples
- both parents
- many people
- each person
- every night
- several computers
- few excuses
- enough water
- no escape
Be aware that the following items belong to the class of pronouns when they occur on their own (e.g. I like this very much), but when they occur before nouns (e.g. this book) they belong to both the determiner and pronoun classes:
- this/that
- these/those
What about possessive my, your, his/her, our, and their when they occur before nouns, as in my book, her bicycle?
The National Curriculum Glossary has examples like her book in the entries for ‘possessive’, ‘pronoun' and ‘determiner’, which seems to suggest that they belong to both classes, i.e. deteminer and pronoun. In our grammar videos (https://www.youtube.com/user/engliciousgrammar), especially videos 2 and 3, we hedge our bets and say that her belongs to both classes, i.e. it’s both a determiner and a pronoun, because this is what then NC seems to be claiming. (See also 'Advanced'.) However, in the GPS tests for KS1 and KS2 it is always assumed that these words are determiners, not pronouns, despite what it says in the glossary.
The words mine, yours, his/hers, ours and theirs (e.g.That phone is mine) occur on their own and we take them to be pronouns.
Determiners can sometimes be modified themselves, usually by a preceding modifier, examples being [almost every] night and [very many] people.
Here are some more words acting as determiners. These examples are drawn directly from the ICE-GB corpus. Refreshing your screen will produce a new list of examples. Which noun does each determiner point at, and what does each determiner tell us about the noun?
- I am sure that, particularly at the moment, you do not want the Council on your neck either. [W1B-020 #155]
- His friend s a fair-weather golfer who d normally have made a dash for the clubhouse when things got really piggy. [W2F-019 #90]
- The only band I can think of that will have across the board appeal is Death Bang Party [S1B-079 #144]
- So we would uh wh what our job would be would be [S1A-024 #52]
- I mean is yours clinging by its [S1A-012 #178]
- just one hour a day makes such a difference. [W1B-007 #67]
- NO MATTER, that s THE NO. [W1B-002 #204]
- One might suppose that before the Exile [S1B-001 #123]
- And he said that it would be helpful to get a toe in the water to find out where they stood [S2A-070 #22]
- The emergence of implementation deficits as an analytical problem of the 1970s reflected increasing concern about the limits to government, especially amongst those who adopted a top down perspective. [W2A-014 #40]
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