Determiner

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(Redirected from Determiner (linguistics))
For the written element in logographic scripts, see Determinative. For other mea
nings see Determination (disambiguation).
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Examples
The girl is a student.
I've lost my keys.
Some folks get all the luck.
Which book is that?
I only had thirty-seven drinks.
I'll take this one.
Both windows were open.
A determiner is a word, phrase or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun
phrase and serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the c
ontext. That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to a de
finite 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 artic
les (like the English the and a[n]), demonstratives (like this and that), posses
sive determiners (like my and their), and quantifiers (like many, few and severa
l). [See examples in the box on the right]
Contents
1 Description
2 Types of determiners
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
Description
Most determiners have been traditionally classed along with adjectives, and this
still occurs: for example, demonstrative and possessive determiners are sometim
es described as demonstrative adjectives and possessive adjectives respectively.
However, modern theorists of grammar prefer to distinguish determiners as a sep
arate word class from adjectives, which are simple modifiers of nouns, expressin
g attributes of the thing referred to. This distinction applies particularly in
languages like English which 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 which includes the articles as well as other words that function
in the place of articles. (The composition of this class may depend on the part
icular language's rules of syntax; for example, in English the possessives my, y
our etc. are used without articles and so can be regarded as determiners, wherea
s their Italian equivalents mio etc. are used together with articles and so may
be better classed as adjectives.) Not all languages can be said to have a lexica
lly distinct class of determiners.
In some languages, the role of certain determiners can be played by affixes (pre
fixes or suffixes) attached to a noun, or by other types of inflection. For exam
ple, definite articles are represented by suffixes in Romanian, Bulgarian and Ma
cedonian (the Swedish bok "book", when definite, becomes boken "the book", while
the Romanian caiet "notebook" similarly becomes caietul "the notebook"). Some l
anguages such as Finnish have possessive affixes, which play the role of possess
ive determiners like my and his.
X-bar theory contends that every noun has a corresponding determiner (or specifi
er). In a case where a noun does not have an explicit determiner (as in physics
uses mathematics), X-bar theory hypothesizes the presence of a zero article, or
zero determiner. Noun phrases that contain only a noun and do not have a determi
ner present are known as bare noun phrases.[1]
Some modern grammatical approaches regard determiners (rather than nouns) as the
head of their phrase, and thus refer to such phrases as determiner phrases rath
er than noun phrases. For more detail on theoretical approaches to the status of
determiners, see Noun phrase: Noun phrases with and without determiners.
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 is instead an emergent syntactic categ
ory. This has been shown through the studies of some languages' histories, inclu
ding Dutch.[2]
Types of determiners
Articles
Demonstratives
Possessives
Quantifiers
Numerals
Distributives
Interrogatives
For details of the use of determiners in English, see English determiners (and s
pecifically for the definite and indefinite articles, English articles).
See also
Classifier (linguistics)
References
Nemoto, Naoko. "On Mass Denotations of Bare Nouns in Japanese and Korean." L
inguistics, 2005, pg. 383
Van de Velde F. "The emergence of the determiner in the Dutch NP. Linguistic
s." March 2010;48(2):263-299
External links
GrammarBank Determiners Practice
SIL Glossary of linguistic terms What is a determiner?
[hide]
v
t
e
Lexical categories and their features
Noun
Abstract/Concrete
Adjectival
Agent
Animate/Inanimate
Attributive
Collective
Common/Proper
Countable
Deverbal
Initial-stress-derived
Mass
Relational
Strong
Verbal
Weak
Verb
Forms
Finite
Non-finite Attributive
Converb
Gerund
Gerundive
Infinitive
Participle (adjectival adverbial)
Supine
Verbal noun
Types
Accusative
Ambitransitive
Andative/Venitive
Anticausative
Autocausative
Auxiliary
Captative
Catenative
Compound
Copular
Defective
Denominal
Deponent
Ditransitive
Dynamic
ECM
Ergative
Frequentative
Impersonal
Inchoative
Intransitive
Irregular
Lexical
Light
Modal
Monotransitive
Negative
Performative
Phrasal
Predicative
Preterite-present
Reflexive
Regular
Separable
Stative
Stretched
Strong
Transitive
Unaccusative
Unergative
Weak
Adjective
Collateral
Demonstrative
Possessive
Post-positive
Adverb
Genitive
Conjunctive
Flat
Interrogative
Prepositional
Pronominal
Relative
Pronoun
Demonstrative
Disjunctive
Distributive
Donkey
Dummy
Formal/Informal
Gender-neutral
Gender-specific
Inclusive/Exclusive
Indefinite
Intensive
Interrogative
Objective
Personal
Possessive
Prepositional
Reciprocal
Reflexive
Relative
Resumptive
Subjective
Weak
Preposition
Inflected
Casally modulated
Determiner
Article
Demonstrative
Interrogative
Possessive
Quantifier
Classifier
Measure word
Particle
Discourse
Interrogative
Modal
Noun
Possessive
Other
Copula
Coverb
Expletive
Interjection (verbal)
Measure word
Preverb
Pro-form
Pro-sentence
Pro-verb
Procedure word
Categories:
Parts of speech
Grammar
Syntactic categories
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