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?

• If an unusual compound is found only in two species within a family, it is quite likely that those two plants are descended from a common ancestor and thus are closely related. _{[W2B-030 #111]}
• A growling of aircraft in the distance was the only hint during the night that the allied attack had started  _{[S2B-008 #99]}
• Most patients sleep after an attack - for anything up to eighteen hours. _{[W2B-023 #54]}
• It also seems allowable to beg if you are a ‘deserving person’. _{[W1A-002 #64]}
• He admitted the loss of the seat was disappointing, but said that on the basis of a BBC exit poll the Tories would have won the seat very comfortably if it had been a General Election. _{[W2C-018 #13]}
• And in fact there are some quite encouraging signs _{[S1B-037 #102]}
• Reporters with the allied forces are also limited in their movements and the material they can send home. _{[W2E-007 #19]}
• The Berner linguistic survey _{[S1A-092 #141]}
• Matsushita is a co-licensor with Philips, as Sony was on CD. _{[W2B-038 #68]}
• The Great Civil War had afforded them a tremendous opportunity to settle their grievances by taking the law into their own hands when public order broke down. _{[W2A-006 #12]}

Welcome!

Englicious is totally free for everyone to use!

But in exchange, we ask that you register for an account on our site.

If you’ve already registered, you can log in straight away.

Since this is your first visit today, you can see this page by clicking the button below.

CLOSE