Questions tagged [determiners]
Determiners are noun-modifiers that convey the reference of a noun without delineating its characteristics [as adjectives do].
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Is ‘ask them to both be there’ or ‘they both will be there’ ever grammatical?
I am trying to articulate how to position the determiner/predeterminer ‘both’ behind the nouns being modified. Every rule that I came across on a cursory search involves some unspecified exception, so ...
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Which determiner is correct, "this" or "the" in "this/the same key"?
I am helping a friend edit a manuscript for an informal reference book about music. There are occasional instances where determiners are being used in a way that I find unfamiliar or awkward. I'm ...
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Is referencing a real instance of a noun the primary function of determiners as a word class?
In almost every case where a determiner/article is used, the noun phrase references an instance of the noun, either imagined or existing. Generally, the opposite is true; noun phrases without ...
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Generic "a man" versus plural "men" in English
In English, is there any difference between the following two?
A man never enjoys his authority being questioned.
Men never enjoy their authority being questioned.
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Unobvious usage of articles "The" and "A" [closed]
Some examples needing an explanation, thank you for the help.
"I came up with (an) idea, we can do..." We should use "an", shouldn't we? But why, if we have a specific idea ...
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"Both" followed by two things, one of them being a plural
"Both" is used to talk about two things (and not more), but what if one of these things is itself a plural? For instance:
Both the children and the teacher were unhappy about the situation.
...
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What Is the Function of the Determinative in the Construction 'They were all visiting their families' according to CGEL?
In Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), Huddleston and Pullum talk about 'universal determinatives' (pp.374–378), 'both' and 'all.' They also talk about the 'distributive determiner' '...
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What was more frequent in Early Modern English: "How many a man who was ..." or "How many men who were ..."?
In A Plea for Captain John Brown, Thoreau writes:
How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!
Phrases ... many countable-noun-in-plural ..., e.g. How many men ...
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What explains the restrictions on determinative "you"?
As Huddleston & Pullum note, "you" can sometimes be used as a determiner:
You idiots never learn.
I'll never understand you idiots.
But this generally can't occur in the singular:
*...
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What is the feature/state/type of a noun made "real" with a determiner?
How do you call the feature/type/state of a noun which has been made "actual/real" with a determiner etc. as opposed to without it:
Car [in the dictionary]
A/the/my/this... car.
I read &...
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Why are anywhere, everywhere, somewhere and nowhere determiners?
The post was edited. The present question was a tangent to the original question, so please excuse the windy logic.
In The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Huddleston and Pullum (2002) ...
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Determiner Problem [closed]
I wrote a sentence.
"People play many dangerous sports. The sports can harm them a lot."
In this sentence, "The sports" refers to "many dangerous sports" in my first ...
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What is it called when indefinite pronouns are used as determiner?
AFAIK it is correct English grammar to say something along the lines of
Familiarize yourself with everything Apple.
What is this use of "everything" called? Is it just a short colloquial ...
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Is it 'a bright orange of the sunrise' or 'the bright orange of the sunrise'?
Wisconsin, where the hills roll like green waves to the horizon, where the cheese is a bright / the bright orange of the sunrise, and the winters are long and dark as death.
(Source: Dungeons & ...
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Is “History of Flight” correct when referring only to one specific flight? [duplicate]
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) writes incident and accident reports, mostly involving aircraft. In all their reports, there is a section titled “History of Flight.” That section gives ...
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Capitalisation of "The" in a colloquially abbreviated proper noun [closed]
If you've got a company/venue name with "The" in it, e.g. "The Royal Hotel", you'd always capitalise the "The". Now imagine you colloquially call it "The Royal",...
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Modifiers denoting colour, provenance, and composition in a fused-head noun phrases
In section 9.3 Fusion of internal modifier and head, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Page 417) says:
(d) Modifiers denoting colour, provenance, and composition
[25] i Henrietta likes ...
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How to use multiple "their" word?
How to use multiple "their" word ?
For example, in the sentence "parents and their children are criminals and their accomplices respectively", does the latter word "their"...
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Is "many" grammatically viable in front of plural-only nouns?
There are certain nouns in English that are plural only and have no singular equivalents. Some such as trousers, scissors, pajamas, pantyhose, shears, binoculars, headphones, etc. can be singularized ...
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"these which" vs "the ones that" [duplicate]
I'm writing a research grant proposal and it was suggested to me that I replace words "these which" by "the ones that" in reference to scientific journals.
Here is the full ...
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Can the predeterminer "half" comfortably occur before plural nouns without determiners?
So "half" belongs to a special class of words known as "predeterminers", those that can occur before determiners:
Half a century
Half the people in this company can't speak a ...
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Why can't "any" be used as subject in negative sentences, while "no" can?
Why is it that any cannot be used as subject in negative sentences, while no can?
An example pair of sentences might be:
No children came.
Any children didn't come.
Please note that the following ...
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Is "all the above" a valid phrase to use in a sentence? [duplicate]
I have just discovered such a wonderful thing as determiners. I did a little digging and found out a lot about the stuff, but there is one thing that still confuses me.
Is "all the above" a ...
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What is the more precise name for the noun-phrase 'The Native' / 'The American'? [duplicate]
Been having a nightmare with this: in a phrase such as 'The native knows all this, and laughs to himself every time he spots an allusion to the animal world in the other's words' (Franz Fanon), or '...
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What type of determiner does ‘certain’ belong to? What is the function of this type of determiner? Why do we need to use this meaningless word?
Cambridge Dictionary has a definition of ‘certain’ as a determiner.
certaindetermineruk /ˈsɜː.tən/ us /ˈsɝː.tən/B1particular but not
named or described:
However, neither in the Wikipedia article nor ...
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Is 'so much as' an adverbial modifier in this example?
He took my money without so much as a thank you.
In this sentence, is 'so much as' an adverbial modifier (adjunct) of the indefinite article (determiner) 'a'? Or can we interpret it as a correlative ...
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I find it awkward to say I live in the China but not I live in the Philippines or I live in The USA. What is the rule for this? [duplicate]
It is awkward to say "I live in the China", but not "I live in the Philippines" or "I live in The USA". The determiner 'the' of the sentences all precede a proper noun ...
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Can neither being used in a nominal sentence (no verb)?
So I've had a debate with a friend about the sentence:
Good promotions don't expire, neither grammar.
(I know it doesn't make logical sense, this is from an ESL discount campaign, in my country, for ...
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Capitalize "the" when referring to publications as physical objects? [duplicate]
There are plenty of questions on Stackexchange and the web about when to capitalize "the" in titles like "The New York Times." But most of those questions have to do with referring ...
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Difference between make 'an' effort and make 'the' effort [closed]
Consider the following sentence.
Yet I still enjoy making ____ (an/the) effort to bake at home from time to time.
Here, what is the difference between an and the? Is effort here a specific or common ...
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"Enough" can't appear in the subject of a negative sentence
Don't use enough (with or without a noun) as the subject of a
negative sentence, ✳‘Enough people didn’t come', but ‘Not
enough did’.
https://www.wordreference.com/EnglishUsage/enough
Why is it so?
...
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"every" + possessive + noun
I naively asked a question about the use of "every" with possessives on the ELL thinking there will be a very simple answer. I was pretty sure that saying either
Every your thought is ...
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"the" vs "those" as determiners
I'm editing a draft of a formal speech written by a non-native English speaker in which "those" is repeatedly used as a demonstrative adjective/determiner. My instinct is to change these ...
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Both their three cars [closed]
Both indicates that the action or state denoted by the verb applies individually to each of two entities. Both books weigh more
than five pounds means that each weighs more than five by
itself, not ...
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"A few" + a number : unremarkable quantity [closed]
A few is usually more than two (two often being referred to as "a couple of"), and less than "several". Few emphasises smallness of
number, while a few emphasises some:
He's a ...
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Serial number/id/reference/label as noun postmodifier?
There are so many novel usages of references, IDs, keys, codes:
If we substitute variable a in the equation (3) with string "ABC" at the address 0x801234 as pointed by Smith [SM2005] we ...
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Does the addition of a second “some” change the meaning of the following sentence?
I’d like know to whether the following sentence retains its nuance and meaning with the addition of “some” before the word “others”.
“I’m good at some types of art and bad at others.”
“I’m good at ...
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"Sufficient(ly)": quantitative vs qualitative [closed]
Garner's reads
Though both words were originally used in reference to quantity,
adequate now tends toward the qualitative and sufficient toward the quantitative.
However, Fowler says
As an ...
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Recognizing phrases with determiners
I've just started learning syntax, from Jim Miller's Edinburgh introduction.
Please answer for Miller's analysis, if possible. Currently, I am concerned I'm being too zealous in recognizing new ...
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Which is correct: "What lurks underneath ARE our lives," or "What lurks underneath IS our lives"? [duplicate]
I admit, the fact I can't figure this out is embarrassing. I'm not looking to change the wording of the sentence, but rather want an answer to which is the correct verb tense in this exact instance. ...
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The other (one)
Page 55 of A Practical English Grammar reads
Normally, other(s) is only used alone if it refers to a noun that has
been mentioned before. An exception is the common plural use of (the)
others to mean ...
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Meaning of the word "any" in "ineligible for any exemption" [duplicate]
An important legal result hinges on the meaning of the word "any" in this sentence:
"If the effect of the domiciliary requirement under subparagraph (A) is to render the debtor ...
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Whatever: pronoun, conjunction or determiner?
I have already learned what is the general difference between conjunctions and conjuncting pronouns, and that is the fact that a pronoun can be a subject or an object in the clause whereas a ...
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Any one thing: syntactic analysis
None remembered any one thing he’d said.
How should any one be analyzed here?
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Can "any" be used in non-negated statements such as "There is any + N"?
This may be weird to ask, but seldomly I hear people come up with these statements:
There is any problem
This additional wheel would cause any problem
Is this grammatically wrong?
In these ...
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Why is "these" preferred in academic writing to "those?" [closed]
for academic writing
The drugs have other inactive ingredients such as galactose, rhodamine,
and hexylene glycol. Exactly why these ingredients remain inactive has
yet to be determined.
Question: Why ...
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A grammatic question about modification
Why can we say "a not very intelligent boy", but not "a not intelligent boy"?
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Using "the" without referring to something before [duplicate]
I was surfing the Internet when I saw this sentence:
From there, you can see the beautiful scene where the sunset's reflecting over the ocean.
As far as I've known, "the" is used when you ...
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Determiner “(a) little” with singular countable words
Page 308 of Practical English Usage reads
We use the determiner (a) little with singular (usually uncountable)
words.
What use with singular countable words is it implying?
I know it's always ...
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reference - demonstrative determiner
I bought a pen and a pencil yesterday. What is surprising is this is
more expensive than that.
In this sentence, I am not sure what "this" and "that" are referring to.
I first ...
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