Determiner (function)

Determiners are words which quantify or identify nouns. These include articles, quantifiers, demonstratives, and possessive pronouns. (Note that many languages lack one or more of these types of determiners.)

In most Indo-European languages, determiners are either independent words or clitics that precede the rest of the noun phrase. In other languages, determiners are prefixed or suffixed to the noun, or even change the noun's form. For example, in Swedish bok "book", when definite, becomes boken "the book" (suffixed definite articles are common in Scandinavian languages).

X-bar_theory contends that every noun has a corresponding determiner. In a case where a noun does not have a pronounced determiner, X-bar_theory hypothesizes a presence of a zero article.

English determiners

• Articles: a, an, the
• Quantifiers: all, few, many, several, some
• Possessive pronouns: her, his, its, my, our, their, your
• Demonstratives: this, that, these, those

See also: English grammar