What is a determiner?
A determiner is a word that comes before a noun to indicate what kind of reference is being made. Determiners are words such as the, a, and an. They are used to indicate the type of reference being made to the noun. A determiner can be any word that indicates something about the noun.
Types of determiners
There are two types of determiners: definite and indefinite. The, a, an, this, and that are definite; the and a are indefinite; this and that are also indefinite; this and these are also definite.
The is sometimes called a determiner because it can be used with nouns to describe or identify them (e.g., “the house”). However, in grammar books, it’s called an adjective rather than just another type of verb or adjective—like in “more than one student” where there is no verb but rather two adjectives (“more” being one and “student” being another).
- a is used to indicate that something does not have a particular name. It’s often used with pronouns, like “everyone” or “everybody.”
- an is used to indicate that something does have a particular name. It’s often used with nouns and adjectives in addition to pronouns, such as “my brother.”
- the is used to indicate that there exists at least one thing of which you’re talking about (or thinking). You can’t use it if you’re talking about things that don’t exist anywhere else (like unicorns).
Why Determiners Are Important
Determiners are used to help you understand what kind of reference is being made to the noun. For example, if you were reading a sentence like “The cat sat on the mat,” it would be helpful to know whether the cat was sitting on its own or was being set upon by another entity (e.g., “the dog” in this case). In order for readers to decide whether there’s an object being referred to here, they need some clue as far as where things stand relative to one another; otherwise, they’ll have no way of figuring out if it’s okay for them (or not) to treat those objects like they do in everyday life.
Determiners can also help us understand how verbs and other parts of speech work together within sentences—or even when they don’t! For example:
- The dog is running through the park. The word “dog” is a determiner because it tells us something about the running dog in this sentence: It’s happy! We know that because we’ve seen dogs running around before and they always seem happy when they’re doing something active like this one is doing right now!
- The book is big. – This book is big.
- I have seen the movie twice already (but I don’t think it’s very good). – A viewer has watched this movie at least twice in her life (and probably more times than she’d like to admit).
Conclusion
Determiners can be used to show whether something is definite or indefinite, as well as provide information about the number of things or people involved in an action. They are also used to make comparisons between items or people.
