View source for Determiner

{{short description|Part of speech reflecting the reference of a noun}}
{{for|the written element in logographic scripts|Determinative}}
{{more citations needed|date=July 2018}}

'''Determiner''', also called '''determinative''' ([[list of glossing abbreviations|abbreviated]] '''{{sc|det}}'''), is a term used in some models of grammatical description to describe a word or affix belonging to a class of noun modifiers. A determiner combines with a [[noun]] to express its [[reference]].{{sfn|Lyons|1977|p=454-455}}{{sfn|Crystal|1985|p=90}} Examples in English include [[article (grammar)|article]]s (''the'' and ''a''), [[demonstrative]]s (''this'', ''that''), [[possessive determiner]]s (''my,'' ''their''), and [[quantifier (linguistics)|quantifier]]s (''many'', ''both''). Not all languages have determiners, and not all systems of grammatical description recognize them as a distinct category.

==Description==
The linguistics term "determiner" was coined by [[Leonard Bloomfield]] in 1933. Bloomfield observed that in [[English language|English]], nouns often require a qualifying word such as an [[Article (grammar)|article]] or [[adjective]]. He proposed that such words belong to a distinct class which he called "determiners".{{sfn|Bloomfield|1933}} 

If a language is said to have determiners, any articles are normally included in the class. Other types of words often regarded as belonging to the determiner class include demonstratives and possessives. Some linguists extend the term to include other words in the [[noun phrase]] such as adjectives and pronouns, or even modifiers in other parts of the sentence.{{sfn|Crystal|1985|p=90}}

Qualifying a lexical item as a determiners may depend on a given language's rules of [[syntax]]. In English, for example, the words ''my'', ''your'' etc. are used without articles and so can be regarded as possessive determiners whereas their [[Italian language|Italian]] equivalents ''{{wt|it|mio}}'' etc. are used together with articles and so may be better classed as adjectives.{{sfn|Progovac|1998|p=166}} 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]]es (prefixes or suffixes) attached to a noun or by other types of [[inflection]]. For example, definite articles are represented by suffixes in [[Romanian language|Romanian]], [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]], [[Macedonian language|Macedonian]], and [[Swedish language|Swedish]]. In Swedish, ''{{wt|sv|bok}}'' ("book"), when definite, becomes ''{{wt|sv|boken}}'' ("the book"), while the Romanian ''{{wt|ro|caiet}}'' ("notebook") similarly becomes ''caietul'' ("the notebook"). Some languages, such as [[Finnish language|Finnish]], have [[possessive affix]]es which play the role of possessive determiners like ''my'' and ''his''.

=== Syntactic order ===
Determiners may be '''predeterminers''', '''central determiners''' or '''postdeterminers''', based on the order in which they can occur.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} 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.

===Articles===
[[Article (grammar)|Articles]] 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. Articles often include definite articles (such as English ''the'') and indefinite articles (such as English ''a'' and ''an'').
===Demonstratives===
[[Demonstrative]]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 [[Deixis|deictic]], which means their meaning changes with [[context (language use)|context]]. 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.

===Possessive determiner===
[[Possessive determiner]]s 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===
[[Quantifier (linguistics)|Quantifier]]s 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 [[Numeral (linguistics)|numerals]]).{{sfn|Matthews|2014}}

=== Determiners and pronouns ===
Determiners are distinguished from [[Pronoun|pronouns]] by the presence of nouns.<ref>{{cite conference |last1=Runner |first1=Jeffrey T. |last2=Kaiser |first2=Elsi |date=2005 |editor-last=Müller |editor-first=Stefan |title=Binding in Picture Noun Phrases: Implications for Binding Theory |url=https://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/HPSG/2005/runner-kaiser.pdf |location=Lisbon |publisher=CSLI Publications |citeseerx=10.1.1.588.7351 |book-title=Proceedings of the HPSG05 Conference}}</ref>
* 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.{{sfn|Tallerman|2011|p=54}}

* 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 [[pronoun]]s into a single class. For further information, see {{slink|Pronoun|Linguistics}}.

===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 ===
[[Interrogative word|Interrogative]] determiners such as ''which'', ''what'', and ''how'' are used to ask a question:
* ''Which'' team won?
* ''What'' day is it?
* ''How'' many do you want?<!-- Don't see Cambridge saying 'How' can be a determiner. Isn't Cambridge calling that an adverb here (in A1)?: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/how -->

===As a functional head===
{{Main|Determiner phrase}}
Some theoretical approaches regard determiners as [[head (grammar)|head]]s of their own [[phrase]]s, which are described as [[determiner phrase]]s. In such approaches, noun phrases containing only a noun without a determiner present are called "bare noun phrases", and are considered to be [[dominance (linguistics)|dominated]] by determiner phrases with [[Empty category#Null determiners|null]] heads.{{sfn|Nemoto|2005|p=383}} For more detail on theoretical approaches to the status of determiners, see {{slink|Noun phrase|With and without determiners}}.

Some theoreticians analyze [[pronoun]]s as determiners or determiner phrases. See [[Pronoun#Theoretical considerations|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.

==Objections to "determiner" as a universal category==

Many [[Functional linguistics|functionalist]] linguists dispute that the determiner is a universally valid linguistic category. They argue that the concept ´determiner´ is [[Anglocentrism|Anglocentric]], since it was developed on the basis of the grammar of English and similar languages of north-western Europe. The linguist Thomas Payne comments that the term determiner "is not very viable as a universal natural class", because few languages consistently place all the categories described as determiners in the same place in the noun phrase.{{sfn|Payne|1997|p=102}}

The category ´determiner´ was developed because in languages like English traditional categories like articles, demonstratives and possessives do not occur together. But in many languages these categories freely co-occur, as [[Matthew Dryer]] observes.<ref name="Dryer">Dryer, Matthew S.. 2007. "Noun phrase structure". In Timothy Shopen (ed.), ''Language typology and syntactic description'', second edition. Volume II: 151-205. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pages 161-162.</ref> For instance, Engenni, a Niger-Congo language of Nigeria, allows a possessive word, a demonstrative and an article all to occur as noun modifiers in the same noun phrase:<ref name="Dryer"/>

{{interlinear|indent=3
|ani  wò       âka  nà
|wife 2SG.POSS that the
|´that wife of yours´}}

There are also languages in which demonstratives and articles do not normally occur together, but must be placed on opposite sides of the noun.<ref name="Dryer"/> For instance, in Urak Lawoi, a language of Thailand, the demonstrative follows the noun:

{{interlinear|indent=3
|rumah besal itu
|house big   that
|´that big house´}}

However, the definite article precedes the noun:

{{interlinear|indent=3
|koq nanaq
|the children
|´the children´}}

As Dryer observes, there is little justification for a category of determiner in such languages.<ref name="Dryer"/>

== See also ==
* [[Classifier (linguistics)]]
* [[Conservativity]]
* [[Determiner spreading]]
* [[English determiners]]

== References ==

{{Reflist}}

=== Sources ===
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book|last1=Bloomfield|first1=Leonard|title=Language|date=1933|publisher=Henry Holt and Company|location=New York}}
* {{cite book|last1=Crystal|first1=David|title=A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics, second edition|date=1985|publisher=Basil Blackwell|location=Oxford|isbn=0631140816}}
* Dryer, Matthew S. (2007). "Noun phase structure". In Timothy Shopen (ed.), ''Language typology and syntactic description'', second edition. Volume II: 151-205. New York: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN| 9780521588560}}.
* {{cite book|last1=Lyons|first1=John|title=Semantics|date=1977|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge}}
* {{cite book|last1=Matthews|first1=P.H.|title=The concise Oxford dictionary of linguistics, third edition)|date=2014|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=9780199675128}}
* {{Cite journal|last=Nemoto|first=Naoko|title=On mass denotations of bare nouns in Japanese and Korean|journal=Linguistics|year=2005|volume=43|pages=383-413}}
* {{cite book|last1=Payne|first1=Thomas E.|title=Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists|date=1997|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=0521588057}}
* {{Cite journal|last=Progovac|first=Ljiljana|title=Determiner Phrase in a Language without Determiners|journal=Journal of Linguistics|year=1998|volume=34|pages=165-179|doi=10.1017/S0022226797006865}}
* {{cite book|last1=Tallerman|first1=Maggie|title=Understanding Syntax. Understanding Language (3rd ed.)|date=2011|publisher=Hodder Education|location=London|isbn=9781444112054}}
* {{Cite journal|last=Van de Velde|first=Freek|title=The emergence of the determiner in the Dutch NP|journal=Linguistics|year=2010|volume=48|pages=263-299|doi=10.1515/ling.2010.009}}
{{refend}}

== External links ==
* [https://www.grammarbank.com/determiners-practice.html GrammarBank – Determiners Practice]
* [https://glossary.sil.org/term/determiner SIL Glossary of linguistic terms – What is a determiner?]

{{lexical categories}}
{{Language determiners}}
[[Category:Parts of speech]]
[[Category:Determiners]]
[[Category:Grammar]]
[[Category:Syntactic categories]]
[[Category: Grammatical marker type]]