A determiner, also called determinative (
abbreviated
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
), is a
word,
phrase, or
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
that occurs together with a
noun or
noun phrase and generally serves to express the
reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to a definite or indefinite element of a class, to a closer or more distant element, to an element belonging to a specified person or thing, to a particular number or quantity, etc. Common kinds of determiners include definite and indefinite
article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
...
s (''the'', ''a''),
demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s (''this'', ''that''),
possessive determiners (''my,'' ''their''),
cardinal numeral
In linguistics, and more precisely in traditional grammar, a cardinal numeral (or cardinal number word) is a part of speech used to count. Examples in English are the words ''one'', ''two'', ''three'', and the compounds ''three hundred ndfort ...
s (''one'', ''two''),
quantifiers (''many'', ''both''),
distributive determiners (''each'', ''every''), and
interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
determiners (''which'', ''what'').
Description
Most determiners have been traditionally classed either as adjectives or
pronouns, and this still occurs in traditional grammars: for example, demonstrative and possessive determiners are sometimes described as ''demonstrative adjectives'' and ''possessive adjectives'' or as ''(adjectival) demonstrative pronouns'' and ''(adjectival) possessive pronouns'' respectively. These traditional interpretations of determiners are related to some of the linguistic properties of determiners in modern syntax theories, such as
deictic information,
definiteness
In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...
and
genitive case. However, modern theorists of
grammar tend to distinguish determiners as a separate
word class from adjectives, which are simple
modifiers of nouns, expressing attributes of the thing referred to. This distinction applies particularly in languages, such as English, that use definite and indefinite articles frequently as a necessary component of noun phrases—the determiners may then be taken to be a class of words that includes the articles as well as other words that function in the place of articles. (The composition of this class may depend on the particular language's rules of
syntax; for example, in English the
possessives ''my'', ''your'' etc. are used without articles and so can be regarded as determiners, whereas their
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional It ...
equivalents ' etc. are used together with articles and so may be better classed as adjectives.) Not all languages can be said to have a lexically distinct class of determiners.
In some languages, the role of certain determiners can be played by
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
es (prefixes or suffixes) attached to a noun or by other types of
inflection. For example, definite articles are represented by suffixes in
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
** Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
,
Bulgarian,
Macedonian
Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia.
Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to:
People Modern
* Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North Ma ...
, and
Swedish. (For example, in Swedish, ' ("book"), when definite, becomes ' ("the book"), while the Romanian ' ("notebook") similarly becomes ''caietul'' ("the notebook").) Some languages, such as
Finnish, have
possessive affix
In linguistics, a possessive affix (from la, affixum possessivum) is an affix (usually suffix or prefix) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives.
Possessive affixes are found in many language ...
es, which play the role of possessive determiners like ''my'' and ''his''.
Universal grammar is the theory that all humans are born equipped with
grammar, and all languages share certain properties. There are arguments that determiners are not a part of universal grammar and are instead part of an emergent
syntactic category A syntactic category is a syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. Word classes, largely corresponding to traditional parts of speech (e.g. noun, verb, preposition, etc.), are syntactic categories. In phrase structure grammars, the ''phrasal c ...
. This has been shown through the studies of some languages' histories, including Dutch.
Syntactic order
Determiners may be predeterminers, central determiners or postdeterminers, based on the order in which they can occur. For example, "all my many very young children" uses one of each. "My all many very young children" is not grammatically correct because a central determiner cannot precede a predeterminer.
Determiners and pronouns
Determiners are distinguished from
pronouns by the presence of nouns.
* Each went his own way. (''Each'' is used as a pronoun, without an accompanying noun.)
* Each man went his own way. (''Each'' is used as a determiner, accompanying the noun ''man''.)
Plural personal pronouns can act as determiners in certain constructions.
* We linguists aren’t stupid.
* I'll give you boys three hours to finish the job!
* Nobody listens to us students.
Some theoreticians unify determiners and
pronouns into a single class. For further information, see .
Articles
Articles
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
...
are words used (as a standalone word or a prefix or suffix) to specify the grammatical definiteness of a noun, and, in some languages, volume or numerical scope.
Definite article
The definite article in the English language is the word ''the''. It denotes people, places, and things that have already been mentioned, implied, or presumed to be known by the listener.
Indefinite article
The indefinite article takes the forms of ''a'' and ''an'' in English. It is mostly synonymous with ''one'', but the word ''one'' is usually used when emphasizing singularity.
Demonstratives
Demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are usually
deictic, which means their meaning changes with
context
Context may refer to:
* Context (language use), the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse summary
Computing
* Context (computing), the virtual environment required to s ...
. They can indicate how close the things being referenced are to the speaker, listener, or other group of people. In the English language, demonstratives express proximity of things with respect to the speaker.
Proximal demonstratives
In English, the words ''this'' and ''these'' are the proximal demonstratives. They express that the particular things being mentioned are very close to the speaker.
Distal demonstratives
The distal demonstratives in the English language are ''that'' and ''those''. They express that there is some distance between the things being referenced and the speaker.
Possessive determiner
Possessive determiners such as ''my'' and ''their'' modify a noun by attributing possession (or other sense of belonging) to someone or something. They are also known as possessive adjectives.
Quantifiers
Quantifiers indicate quantity. Some examples of quantifiers include: ''all'', ''some'', ''many'', ''little'', ''few'', and ''no''. Quantifiers only indicate a general quantity of objects, not a precise number such as ''twelve'', ''dozen'', ''first'', ''single'', or ''once'' (which are considered
numerals).
Distributive determiners
Distributive determiners, also called distributive adjectives, consider members of a group separately, rather than collectively. Words such as ''each'' and ''every'' are examples of distributive determiners.
Interrogative determiners
Interrogatives
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most of ...
are used to ask a question, such as ''which'', ''what.''
As a functional head
Some modern grammatical approaches regard determiners as
heads of their own
phrases. In such approaches, noun phrases are generally
dominated by determiner phrases whose heads are often
null
Null may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Computing
* Null (SQL) (or NULL), a special marker and keyword in SQL indicating that something has no value
*Null character, the zero-valued ASCII character, also designated by , often used ...
. Noun phrases that contain only a noun and do not have a determiner present are known as bare noun phrases.
For more detail on theoretical approaches to the status of determiners, see .
Some theoreticians analyze
pronouns as determiners or determiner phrases. See
Pronoun: Theoretical considerations. This is consistent with the determiner phrase viewpoint, whereby a determiner, rather than the noun that follows it, is taken to be the head of the phrase.
See also
*
Classifier (linguistics)
A classifier ( abbreviated or ) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns and can be considered to "classify" a noun depending on the type of its referent. It is also sometimes called a measure word or counter word. Classifiers play an important ...
*
Conservativity In formal semantics conservativity is a proposed linguistic universal which states that any determiner D must obey the equivalence D(A,B) \leftrightarrow D(A, A\cap B). For instance, the English determiner "every" can be seen to be conservative b ...
*
Determiner spreading In linguistics, determiner spreading (DS), also known as Multiple or Double Determiners is the appearance of more than one determiner associated with a noun phrase, usually marking an adjective as well as the noun itself.
The extra determiner has b ...
*
English determiners
References
External links
GrammarBank – Determiners PracticeSIL Glossary of linguistic terms – What is a determiner?
{{lexical categories
Parts of speech
Grammar
Syntactic categories
Grammatical marker type