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?

• House of Commons is like a village as you well know _{[S1B-043 #90]}
• On Tuesday she could be gone making way for a new occupant _{[S2B-020 #115]}
• In the cross-examination of Laski by Sir Patrick Hastings, the question at issue became not what he had actually said at the meeting but what he had written on the subject. _{[W2B-015 #101]}
• Long ball alow the ground along the ground flicked up by Robson and then turned away by Kenny Sanson for Queen ’s Park Rangers _{[S2A-003 #83]}
• We need to give the restaurant a ring  _{[S1A-071 #342]}
• Now the ligaments having become torn the the uh disc itself is capable of and is not restrained by that ligament and is capable of movement and uh was being extruded so that it compressed the spinal cord _{[S1B-068 #78]}
• Whatever the source of air pollution the young are always the most vulnerable  _{[S2B-022 #138]}
• However I would prefer to avoid resort to legal expedients and the acrimony caused if it can be avoided: _{[W1B-020 #154]}
• there was no no book _{[S1A-084 #3]}
• Here you can see that as soon as the fibroblasts have grown out _{[S2A-058 #152]}