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English determiners

Determiners in the English language

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The syntactic role characteristically performed by determiners is known as the determinative function (see § Terminology). 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). 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), 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., many, and none) as well as the numerals. 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). They may appear on their own without a noun, similar to pronouns (e.g., I'll have some), but they are distinct from pronouns.

Some sources, e.g. Cambridge Dictionary, Longman Dictionary, Collins Dictionary, and Collins COBUILD English grammar distinguish between predeterminers and determiners. Following this distinction, determiners can't be used directly next to each other (not: the my or my the). However, it is possible to put a predeterminer before a determiner (e.g. all the).

Terminology

Words and phrases can be categorized by both their syntactic category and their syntactic function. In the clause the dog bit the man, for example, the dog belongs to the syntactic category of noun phrase and performs the syntactic function of subject. The distinction between category and function is at the heart of a terminological issue surrounding the word determiner: various grammars have used the word to describe a category, a function, or both.

Some sources, such as A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, use determiner as a term for a category as defined above and determinative for the function that determiners and possessives typically perform in a noun phrase (see § Functions). Others, such as The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), make the opposite terminological choice. And still others (e.g., The Grammar Book) use determiner for both the category and the function. This article uses determiner for the category and determinative for the function in the noun phrase.

The lexical category determiner is the class of words described in this article. They head determiner phrases, which can realize the functions determinative, predeterminative, and modifier:

  • determiner phrases as determinatives: the box, this hill
  • determiner phrases as predeterminatives: all the time, both those cars
  • determiner phrases as modifiers: these two images, clear enough

The syntactic function determinative is a function that specifies a noun phrase. That is, determinatives add abstract meanings to the noun phrase, such as definiteness, proximity, number, and the like. While the determinative function is typically realized by determiner phrases, they may also be realized by noun phrases and prepositional phrases:

  • noun phrases as determinatives: my question, this size room
  • prepositional phrases as determinatives: over twenty belts, up to a hundred people

This article is about determiners as a lexical category.

History

Traditional grammar has no concept to match determiners, which are instead classified as adjectives, articles, or pronouns. The articles and demonstratives have sometimes been seen as forming their own category, but are often classified as adjectives. Linguist and historian Peter Matthews observes that the assumption that determiners are distinct from adjectives is relatively new, "an innovation of … the early 1960s."

In 1892, prior to the emergence of the determiner category in English grammars, Leon Kellner, and later Jespersen, discussed the idea of "determination" of a noun:

In Old English the possessive pronoun, or, as the French say, "pronominal adjective," expresses only the conception of belonging and possession; it is a real adjective, and does not convey, as at present, the idea of determination. If, therefore, Old English authors want to make nouns preceded by possessive pronouns determinative, they add the definite article.

By 1924, Harold Palmer had proposed a part of speech called "Pronouns and Determinatives", effectively "group[ing] with the pronouns all determinative adjectives (e.g., article-like, demonstratives, possessives, numerals, etc.), [and] shortening the term to determinatives (the "déterminatifs" of the French grammarians)." Palmer separated this category from more prototypical adjectives (what he calls "qualificative adjectives") because, unlike prototypical adjectives, words in this category are not used predicatively, tend not to inflect for comparison, and tend not to be modified.

In 1933, Leonard Bloomfield introduced the term determiner used in this article, which appears to define a syntactic function performed by "limiting adjectives".

Our limiting adjectives fall into two sub-classes of determiners and numeratives … The determiners are defined by the fact that certain types of noun expressions (such as house or big house) are always accompanied by a determiner (as, this house, a big house).

Matthews argues that the next important contribution was by Ralph B. Long in 1961, though Matthews notes that Long's contribution is largely ignored in the bibliographies of later prominent grammars, including A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language and CGEL. Matthews illustrates Long's analysis with the noun phrase this boy: "this is no longer, in [Long's] account, an adjective. It is instead a pronoun, of a class he called ‘determinative’, and it has the function of a ‘determinative modifier’." This analysis was developed in a 1962 grammar by Barbara M. H. Strang and in 1972 by Randolph Quirk and colleagues. In 1985, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language appears to have been the first work to explicitly conceive of determiner as a distinct lexical category.

Determiners as heads?

Until the late 1980s, linguists assumed that, in a phrase like the red ball, the head was the noun ball and that the was a dependent. But a student at MIT named Paul Abney proposed, in his PhD dissertation about English noun phrases (NPs) in 1987, that the head was not the noun ball but the determiner the, so that the red ball is a determiner phrase (DP). This has come to be known as the DP analysis or the DP hypothesis (see Determiner phrase), and as of 2008 it is the majority view in generative grammar, though it is rejected in other perspectives. Chomsky also rejects it.

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