Determiner (definition)

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In English, words like 'the' and 'a' are examples of determiners. They are used to describe some specific or non-specific instance of an item described by a noun. If a speaker utters the phrase "the man left" he or she typically has some particular man in mind and expects the hearer to know which man he or she is referring too. Articles, quantifiers, numerals, and deictic determiners are special kinds of determiners.

See Also

External Links

References

  • Crystal, D. (2008) Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 6th Edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Matthews, P. H. (1997) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.