Determiners

Question 1

What are determiners?

Answer 1

Determiners may come before nouns or noun phrases. They are used to modify nouns, but they are different from adjectives.

Lisa brings her laptop to the meeting every Friday.

There are two main groups of determiners.

Group A determiners (articles, possessives, demonstratives)
Group B determiners (quantifiers, ordinals, cardinals)

Question 2

Group A determiners

Answer 2

Group A determiners are used to identify things.

Group A determiners include:

articles (a, an, the)
possessives (my, your, his, her, its, our, their)
demonstratives (this, these, that, those)

Question 3

Group B determiners

Answer 3

Group B determiners show quantity or number.

Group B determiners include:

quantifiers (some, all, every, etc.)
ordinals (first, second, third, etc.)
cardinals (one, two, three, etc.)

Question 4

Using determiners together

Answer 4

Group B determiners can be used together.

CORRECT: every first Sunday
CORRECT: all three children

Group A determiners cannot be used together.

INCORRECT: much three children (“Much” is not used to modify countable nouns.)
INCORRECT: the my bag (Group A determiners cannot be used together.)

Question 5

Summary

Answer 5

Determiners may come before nouns or noun phrases.

There are two groups of determiners:

Group A

Articles, possessives and demonstratives are used to identify things. These determiners cannot be used together in a sentence.
Group B

Quantifiers, cardinals and ordinals are used to show quantity and number. These determiners can be used together in a sentence.