Determiners

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Determiners are words or phrases in noun phrases that modify or indicate what entities the noun refers to. For example, a determiner can constrain the meaning of the noun to a specific or non-specific, known or unknown entity, or a particular number of entities. Determiners include the following types.

  • Demonstratives: this, that, these, those
  • Definite and indefinite delimiters or articles: a, an, the (I prefer to use my own term delimiter instead of article)
  • Possessive determiners: my, your, his,her,its,our, their
  • Quantifiers: many, few, several
  • Numerals: one, two; first, second
  • Distributive determiners: each, any, both
  • Interrogative determiners: which
  • Noun classifiers: In East Asian languages, classifiers indicate a semantic class or noun type, e.g., Chinese yi ge shitou and Korean dolmaengi han ge, where ge is used in both languages as a noun counter for general nouns that indicates a particular item