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 it was for peace uhm throughout the world from different nationalities _{[S1A-094 #289]}
• It ’s the core of the process isn’t it  _{[S1B-020 #38]}
• The alternatives to the measures in the bill are more violence in prison, more suicides, more human degradation and more expenditure, with no discernible advantage to the wider community. _{[W2C-007 #74]}
• So we have this cycle of the vocal folds closing closed opening and open _{[S2A-056 #54]}
• All the same, I began to feel overdressed in my skirt and blouse, so as a gesture of freedom I took off my tights. _{[W2F-013 #107]}
• His maggots are kept in clean bran and are sweet and attractive to the fish, whilst the other angler is using sweaty, smelly, stale maggots, bought from a supplier who only sells maggots because he has to! _{[W2D-017 #33]}
• As I am in such a mood with the “married”, I ’m not evening even bothering to send them postcards. _{[W1B-009 #14]}
• It ’s now come full circle seventeen years later and I ’m working with a group of disabled and able-bodied people  _{[S1A-004 #114]}
• But you can see how th this gives that this s picture gives you some indication of the hill between one and a half and two _{[S2A-006 #108]}
• Such an overburden of inorganic regulation has insidious side-effects  _{[S2A-039 #93]}

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