Determiner

A determiner is a word that syntactically functions typically as part of a determined noun phrase to assist with identification of the head of that noun phrase. In English a wide variety of different determiner classes exist. They usually indicate definiteness (or indefiniteness), and often indicate grammatical number. They may be articles, pronouns, adjectives or adverbs, but only specific types of pronouns can be used.

Unfortunately, the grammar for these is rather complex and difficult to understand. However, the good news is that English language learners rarely have massive problems with them.

Classes of Determiners

There are a number of classes of determiners:

Type of determiner	Example(s)	Example(s) in noun phrases	Notes
Genitive case noun phrases	Alice’s, students’.	Alice’s hair was wet.
Dependent possessive pronouns	my, your, his, her, its, one’s, our, their	Her hair was wet.	Sometimes incorrectly called “possessive adjectives.” These are also a type of genitive case NPs.
Grammatical articles	the, a, an, zero article
Demonstratives	this, that, these, those		Sometimes incorrectly called “demonstrative adjectives.”
Dependent interrogative pronouns	what, which, whose		Sometimes incorrectly called “interrogative adjectives.”
Dependent relative pronouns	what, which, whose
Quantifiers	a few, a little, much, many, a lot of, most, some, any, enough
Cardinal numbers	one, twenty, forty-two. etc.
Numeral adverbs	once, twice, thrice
Distributives	all, both, half, either, every, neither, each
Difference words	other, another

There are also pre-determiners which go before determiners, such as articles these include: such, what, half, rather and quite.

See Appendix:List of determiners