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English determiners (also known as determinatives)[1]: 354 are words – such as the, a, each, some, which, this, and numerals such as six – that are most commonly used with nouns to specify their referents. The determiners form a closed lexical category in English.[2]
The syntactic role characteristically performed by determiners is known as the determinative function (see § Terminology).[3] A determinative combines with a noun (or, more formally, a nominal; see English nouns § Internal structure) to form a noun phrase (NP). This function typically comes before any modifiers in the NP (e.g., some very pretty wool sweaters, not *very pretty some wool sweaters[a]). The determinative function is typically obligatory in a singular, countable, common noun phrase (compare I have a new cat to *I have new cat).
Semantically, determiners are usually definite or indefinite (e.g., the cat versus a cat),[4] and they often agree with the number of the head noun (e.g., a new cat but not *many new cat). Morphologically, they are usually simple and do not inflect.
The most common of these are the definite and indefinite articles, the and a(n). Other determiners in English include the demonstratives this and that, and the quantifiers (e.g., all, many, and none) as well as the numerals.[1]: 373 Determiners also occasionally function as modifiers in noun phrases (e.g., the many changes), determiner phrases (e.g., many more) or in adjective or adverb phrases (e.g., not that big).[1]: 565 They may appear on their own without a noun, similar to pronouns (e.g., I'll have some), but they are distinct from pronouns.[1]: 412
- ^ a b c d Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978052143146-0.
- ^ Matthews, Peter H. (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199675128.
- ^ L., Trask, R. (2013). A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. Taylor and Francis. p. 80. ISBN 978-0-203-39336-9. OCLC 830171204.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Breban, Tine (2012), Meurman-Solin, Anneli; Lopez-Couso, Maria Jose; Los, Bettelou (eds.), "Functional Shifts and the Development of English Determiners", Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 271–300, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199860210.003.0012, ISBN 9780199860210, retrieved 2020-12-28
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