Determiners

Function

Determiners are words placed in front of a noun to make it clear what the noun refers to.

The word ‘people‘ by itself is a general reference to some group of human beings. If someone says ‘these people’, we know which group they are talking about, and if they say ‘a lot ofpeople’ we know how big the group is.

‘These‘ and ‘a lot of‘ are determiners in these sentences.

Classes of Determiners

There are several classes of determiners:

Definite and Indefinite articles
the, a, an

Demonstratives
this, that, these, those

Possessives
my, your, his, her, its, our, their

Quantifiers
a few, a little, much, many, a lot of, most, some, any, enough, etc.

Numbers
one, ten, thirty, etc.

Distributives
all, both, half, either, neither, each, every

Difference words
other, another

Question words
Which, what, whose

Defining words
which, whose

The following words are pre-determiners. They go before determiners, such as articles: such and what, half, rather, quite