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?

• And uh then having sort of looked at that we ’ll ask the question and hopefully answer it uh why observe from space  _{[S2A-043 #4]}
• (Gosh, the things which satisfy us as we get older ...!!) _{[W1B-001 #193]}
• But most importantly perhaps the monarchy is also used to conserve and protect an elaborate system of established privilege and power  _{[S2B-032 #72]}
• If one takes the nature of rule to mean govern and control then the Franks did not rule Brittany, though they were responsible for the formation of Brittany into a political unit. _{[W1A-003 #94]}
• Now this may improve depending of course upon whether the nerve improves  _{[S2A-062 #91]}
• and over this person ’s shoulder I could see these eyes sort of glaring at me _{[S1B-049 #134]}
• The bloke in charge always he knows Ben quite well cos he eats there a lot  _{[S1A-055 #94]}
• But of of course the point is that this this countryside is itself this home this spiritual home to which Sir Simon Gourlay returns at the weekend as as many of us do is in fact uhm uhm unreal in the sense that that its only reality is that is that we have made it _{[S1B-037 #35]}
• Subsequently they made their interim final award uh when six further instalments had become due further to the first instalment _{[S2A-065 #62]}
• The tragedy is and it is for me personally for my party for our whole people and for my right honourable friend herself a very real tragedy  _{[S2B-050 #88]}

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