Determiners: What They Are and How To Use Them

Do you know what a determiner is? This article will provide you with all of the information you need on determiners, including its definition, usage, example sentences, and more!

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What are determiners?

According to Your Dictionary, there are five types of determiners or classifiers: an indefinite article, definite article, quantifier or quantifying determiner, demonstrative determiner, and possessive determiner. This is used to provide information about a noun or to introduce a noun. Articles are one of the most common types of determiner. In English, these include a, an, and the. A and an are indefinite articles and the is a definite article. Demonstratives are this, that, these and those, and quantifiers are words like all, few, some and many. Possessives show ownership and include the possessive pronouns my, your, his, her its, our, and their. The determiner comes before the noun and any modifying adjectives and are required with singular nouns. These can be used to speak about a singular noun generally, to speak about a singular noun specifically, or to speak about a plural noun specifically. Possessive adjectives, demonstrative adjectives, interrogative determiners or interrogatives, distributive determiners, and other entities like this are useful for a general or specific noun and for understanding English grammar. While native English speakers may understand this grammatical theory inherently since it is second nature, it can be more difficult if it is your second language. These nominal agreement markers or nominal syntactic category of the categorical status of determiners can say whether you are referring to a specific entity or a general one, and the phrasal schema surrounding it. The structural position as well as the determiner used can determine on the consonant sound or vowel sound as well as if it is a countable noun or uncountable noun.

Many different languages also contain words that mean determiners. You may notice that some of these translations of determiners look and sound similar to one another. These are called cognates, which are words and phrases in different languages that likely have the same root or language of origin, causing them to sound the same. The below list of translations of determiner is provided by Word Sense

  •  Bengali: নির্ণায়ক‎
  •  Italian: determinante‎ (masc.)
  •  Polish: określnik‎ (masc.)
  •  Lithuanian: determinantas‎
  •  Arabic: تحديد ما‎ (tahdid ma)
  •  Esperanto: determinanto‎
  •  Bokmål: determinativ‎ (neut.)
  •  Thai: ดีเทอร์มิแนนต์‎
  •  Russian: определя́ющее сло́во‎ (neut.), детерминати́в‎ (masc.)
  •  French: déterminant‎ (masc.)
  •  Vietnamese: định thức‎
  •  Persian: دترمینان‎
  •  German: related terms: Artikelwort‎ (neut.), Determinans‎ (neut.), Determinativ‎ (neut.), Determinierer‎ (masc.)
  •  Uzbek: mezondir‎
  •  Catalan: determinant‎
  •  Portuguese: determinante‎ (masc.)
  •  Spanish: determinante‎ (masc.)
  •  Irish: cinntitheach‎ (masc.)
  •  Finnish: tarkenne‎
  •  Ukrainian: визначник‎ (neut.)
  •  Mandarin: 限定詞‎, 限定词‎ (xiàndìngcí)
  •  Tajik: муайянкунандаи‎
  •  Nynorsk: determinativ‎ (neut.)
  •  Dutch: determinator‎ (masc.)
  •  Korean: 한정사‎, 관형사‎
  •  Serbo-Croatian: детерминанта‎
  •  Urdu: دترمینان‎
  •  Mongolian: тодорхойлох‎ (todorkhoilokh)
  •  Bulgarian: детерминанта‎ (determinanta)
  •  Norwegian: determinativ‎ (neut.), bestemmelsesord‎ (neut.)
  •  Swedish: determinant‎ (neut.)
  •  Japanese: 限定詞‎ (げんていし, genteishi)

What are examples of determiners?

Determiners can be used in many different contexts in the English language. Trying to use a word or literary technique in a sentence is one of the best ways to memorize what it is, but you can also try making flashcards or quizzes that test your knowledge. Try using this term of the day in a sentence today! Below are a couple of examples of determiners from Your Dictionary that can help get you started incorporating this tool into your everyday use. 

  •  Many kittens are taught to hunt by their mothers.
  •  I don’t want to go to that movie.
  •  She liked all desserts equally.
  •  I need an MRI.
  •  He took all the books.
  •  An ostrich would beat a chicken in a race.
  •  Which one is his house?
  •  My best friend is a cat.
  •  These black raspberries are sour.
  •  Honesty is her best quality.
  •  The tree shed its leaves.
  •  The dog is barking too loudly.
  •  We are going to the hospital.
  •  She didn’t like the music.
  •  Do you want this piece of chicken?
  •  A dog is a good pet.
  •  We went to the best restaurant in town.
  •  The dog growled and showed its teeth.
  •  Few children like lima beans, so the cafeteria stopped serving them.
  •  We are to look at a hamster.
  •  We are to give her our library card number, then she will click the button to provide a username.
  •  Where is your car?
  •  It’s our secret recipe.
  •  Their house was just around the corner.
  •  He wanted those boys to go away.

What are other grammar terms?

There are many different literary and grammatical techniques and devices that you might see when you are reading prose or poetry. It is important to recognize these terms because they are always used for some purpose. Knowing these devices can help readers understand the author’s deeper meaning and why they are using such a device. Take a look at the below list of grammatical devices from OED and see how many you know! Then try researching ones that are unfamiliar to you. 

  • reflexive
  •  gender
  •  participle | past participle | present participle
  •  prefix
  •  masculine
  •  feminine
  •  collective noun
  •  locative
  •  inflection | inflected | inflectional
  •  apposition
  •  that-clause
  •  possessive adjective
  •  verb (v.)
  •  sentence adverb |sentence adverbial
  •  dative
  •  verbal noun
  •  finite
  •  number
  •  dual
  •  neuter
  •  unmarked genitive
  •  passive infinitive
  •  person
  •  postmodify | postmodifier
  •  plural
  •  auxiliary verb | auxiliary
  •  construed (const., constr.)
  •  element
  •  direct speech
  •  intensifier
  •  filler
  •  head
  •  infinitive
  •  prepositional object
  •  accusative
  •  adverbial | adverbially
  •  parasynthetic
  •  suffix
  •  superlative
  •  indirect passive
  •  article
  •  indicative
  •  protasis
  •  pleonasm | pleonastic
  •  special use
  •  declarative
  •  comparative
  •  compound | compounding
  •  similative
  •  possessive pronouns | proper name
  •  periphrasis | periphrastic
  •  participial adjective
  •  determiner
  •  nominative
  •  modal verb | modal auxiliary verb | modal auxiliary
  •  passive
  •  nominal relative | nominal relative clause
  •  causative
  •  mood
  •  transitive
  •  indirect question
  •  quasi-
  •  cataphoric
  •  conditional
  •  complementary
  •  phrase (phr.)
  •  absolute (absol.)
  •  possessive pronoun
  •  indirect object
  •  progressive
  •  definite article
  •  bare infinitive
  •  preposition (prep.)
  •  possessive
  •  phrasal verb
  •  noun phrase
  •  to-infinitive
  •  intransitive
  •  adverb (adv.)
  •  simple
  •  zero
  •  predicative
  •  stem
  •  noun (n.)
  •  present tense
  •  concrete
  •  singular
  •  personal pronoun
  •  attributive
  •  combining form (comb. form)
  •  construction
  •  main clause
  •  second person
  •  object | direct object | indirect object
  •  cognate object
  •  parenthetical | parenthetically
  •  past tense
  •  non-referential
  •  adjective
  •  collocation | collocate
  •  agent noun
  •  subject
  •  indefinite
  •  direct object
  •  morpheme
  •  optative
  •  subjunctive
  •  past participle
  •  case
  •  indirect speech
  •  genitive
  •  double object
  •  instrumental
  •  subjective
  •  antecedent
  •  copular verb | copula
  •  objective
  •  vocative
  •  demonstrative
  •  appositive
  •  interjection
  •  prepositional phrase
  •  main verb
  •  active
  •  present participle
  •  non-finite
  •  anaphoric
  •  imperative (imper.)
  •  relative
  •  common noun
  •  ellipsis | elliptical
  •  clause
  •  positive
  •  tense
  •  combination
  •  base form
  •  direct question
  •  first person
  •  pro-form
  •  count noun
  •  abstract
  •  interrogative
  •  impersonal (impers.)
  •  mass noun
  •  agree | agreement
  •  complement
  •  part of speech
  •  subordinate clause
  •  perfect
  •  anticipatory
  •  pronoun (pron.)
  •  conjunction (conj.)
  •  premodify | premodifier
  •  third-person
  •  prepositional passive
  •  apodosis and protasis

Overall, a determiner is used to provide information about a noun or to introduce a noun.

Sources:

  1. Glossary of grammatical terms | OED 
  2. Determiner | Word Sense
  3. What Is a Determiner? | Your Dictionary