Determiners

DETERMINERS

1. Definition :---

   Determiners are words that we put before nouns or noun phrases to make them clear as to what they mean.

 A determiner tells us which or how many persons/things we are talking about.

For example:-

 When we say his big house, we are describing one house which is not small and it belongs to him.

Or when we say those tall trees, we mean more than one tree and they are not short, and the trees are not here but over there.

 Examples of most common determiners are:-

 ** 'the' --  which is known as the Definite Determiner,and

 ** 'a' and 'an' --  which are the Indefinite Determiners.

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  2. Classes of Determiners
  

  1. Definite and Indefinite articles:-- the, a, an

  2. Demonstratives:-- this, that, these, those

  3. Possessives:-- my, your, his, her, its, our, their

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

  5. Numbers:-- one, ten, thirty, etc.

  6. Distributives:-- all, both, half, either, neither, each, every

  7. Difference words:-- other, another

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  3. Determiners and Pronouns
 
 A clear understanding of determiners and how they are used is important in order not to confuse with pronouns.

The following examples illustrate the differences between them.

DETERMINER	PRONOUN
This car is very expensive.	This is a very expensive car.
That castle  is haunted.	That is a haunted castle.

As can be easily noticed, the determiner always appears before a noun while a pronoun takes the place of a noun.

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