1.3.5.2 Determiners
The functional category that is most closely associated with nouns are the determiners which always precede nominal elements:
| (148) | a | the party |
| b | a snake | |
| c | this idea of yours | |
| d | which friend of mine |
Determiners may contribute to the interpretation of the nominal in terms of the notion of definiteness. This has a number of roles to play in interpreting a sentence. One of these has to do with how we introduce new items into a discourse and how we maintain a discourse topic. Consider the short monologue below:
| (149) | A man walked into a shop. The shopkeeper greeted the man. |
In the first sentence, we introduce the main aspects of the story: the man and the ‘shop’ situation. In this sentence the two nouns man and shop are preceded by the determiner a. This is the indefinite article and one of its functions is to signal new information that has not been mentioned previously. In the next sentence we have two more nouns shopkeeper and man (again). This time they are preceded by the determiner the, which is the definite article. Its function is to indicate information which has already been given and, therefore, to connect a series of sentences as being about the same thing. Thus, the shopkeeper is assumed to be the shopkeeper of the shop mentioned in the previous sentence, not another one round the corner, and the man is assumed to be the one who we have just been informed has walked into the shop, not one who was already in the shop, for example.
Determiners are also involved in the interpretation of nouns with respect to specificity. Compare the following:
| (150) | a | I was looking for the cat |
| b | I was looking for a cat |
In the first sentence there is a specific cat that I am looking for, and the speaker obviously assumes the person who is addressed knows which specific cat he is talking about. The second sentence is, however, ambiguous. It could either mean that the speaker was looking for a specific cat, but assumed that the addressee does not know which cat is referred to, or it could mean that the speaker is looking for some non-specified cat and that any cat would satisfy the conditions of his search.
In English there are a number of syntactic phenomena that seem to be determined by the notion of definiteness. For example, only indefinite nominals can go in the post-verbal position in sentences which start with there:
| (151) | a | there once lived an old woodcutter |
| b | *there once lived the old woodcutter |
Determiners are often marked for number. So, a, this and that are singular whilst these and those are plural, only introducing nouns with the relevant number:
| (152) | a | a boy/*boys |
| b | these girls/*girl |
With mass nouns, for which number is not applicable, we can have neither singular nor plural determiners (unless we treat the mass noun as a count noun, referring to types or groups of the material that the noun refers to – see the discussion in section 2.1.3.):
| (153) | a | *a sand |
| b | *these sand |
The definite determiner the can be used in either singular or plural contexts and even those unmarked for number, when used with mass nouns:
| (154) | a | the boy |
| b | the boys | |
| c | the water |
A related concept to number is quantity and determiners often act as quantifiers for the nouns they introduce:
| (155) | a | some people |
| b | all newspapers | |
| c | both parties | |
| d | every student |
These quantificational determiners are also often marked for number, introducing only certain types of noun:
| (156) | singular | plural | mass | ||
| a | both | *house | houses | *bread | |
| b | every | book | *books | *water | |
| c | all | *cat | cats | sand | |
| d | some | man | men | oil |
They are also marked for definiteness and so may or may not introduce nouns sitting in the post-verbal position in there sentences:
| (157) | a | there arrived some letters |
| b | there appeared many djinn | |
| c | *there sat all footballers |
Not all quantificational elements are determiners, however. Some quantifiers might at first appear to be determiners, but the observation that they are not in complementary distribution with determiners challenges this assumption:
| (158) | a | many problems | (the many problems) |
| b | few ideas | (these few ideas) | |
| c | several inaccuracies | (the several inaccuracies) |
Traditionally this group of quantifiers are known as post-determiners as they always follow other determiners (which are sometimes called central determiners). This terminology gives the impression that post-determiners are a subclass of determiner, which is likely to be inaccurate. These elements often have many adjectival qualities, including being able to be modified by degree adverbs and having comparative and superlative forms:
| (159) | a | very many buildings | more buildings | most buildings |
| b | so few typos | fewer typos | fewest typos | |
| c | ?very less money | ?the lesser money | the least money |
For these reasons we will consider these elements as adjectival and will put off their discussion until a later section.
Pronouns might also be argued to be determiners. Certain determiners can be used straightforwardly as pronouns:
| (160) | a | I like this hat | I like this |
| b | I’d like some cake | I’d like some |
Moreover, some pronouns can be used as determiners:
| (161) | a | we three kings | |
| b | you fool | ||
| c | them dandelions | (dialectal) |
Also, pronouns and determiners are in total complementary distribution:
| (162) | a | the man |
| b | him | |
| c | *the him |
While certain nouns tend not to appear with determiners either, suggesting that pronouns might be analysed as one of these kinds of noun, the fact is that all nouns can appear with determiners under the right circumstances:
| (163) | a | he’s not the Peter she married |
| b | I met a Peter the other day |
However, there are no circumstances that a pronoun can appear with a determiner:
| (164) | a | *he’s not the him she married |
| b | *I met a him the other day |
Like the inflections, the lexical properties of determiners are relatively simple. They have no theta grid and they subcategorise only for nominal complements. If pronouns are determiners, then in their pronominal use they can be considered as ‘intransitive’, taking no complement:
| (165) | the | category: | [+F, +N, –V] | |
| subcat: | [nominal] | |||
| a | category: | [+F, +N, –V] | ||
| subcat: | [nominal] | |||
| this | category: | [+F, +N, –V] | ||
| subcat: | [(nominal)] | |||
| he | category: | [+F, +N, –V] | ||
| subcat: | [(Ø)] |
In these lexical entries, the and a are indicated to be determiners that have an obligatory nominal complement, while this has an optional complement and he has no complement. Thus this may be used as a pronoun (i.e. a determiner used without a nominal complement) and he is always used as a pronoun.