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?

• But I I I could even try going in there and just saying look uhm get a few off them and then saying look uhm I ’m a part of a a s student ’s right centre _{[S1A-079 #249]}
• and it has uh the influences that Jack was talking about of the French orchestration but still nevertheless could only have been Bax _{[S1B-032 #152]}
• We should never forget the lesson of that isolation of being on the outside looking in for the conduct of today ’s affairs  _{[S2B-050 #43]}
• Repeatedly, the essays on Proust or Joyce have been scoured for statements that might be applied to Beckett ’s own fiction and More Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy pillaged for what they say (or may be persuaded to say) about their author ’s vision of the world or philosophic beliefs. _{[W2A-004 #21]}
• It shows just shows how the technology of has changed in thirty years _{[S2A-042 #67]}
• What is the difference between an ‘award’ and a ‘grant’? _{[W2D-003 #9]}
• Tommy screamed, his cracked voice riding clearly through the still air. _{[W2F-002 #184]}
• Franco is there to make the interception for Argentina _{[S2A-014 #130]}
• And uhm the the reason for carrying carrying this out it really sounds strange you know just pinning pieces of uhm rope down on the ground uh to make a a rectangle or a square _{[S1A-036 #199]}
• There ’s no quick fix to the city ’s environmental problems but there is a simple cheap cure for its most common child-killer  _{[S2B-022 #126]}

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