Determiners, articles and quantifiers

Presented By:

Rushda Ashraf

English Language Instructor

Determiners, Articles and Quantifiers

Definition

• Articles, determiners and quantifiers are those little words that modifies noun.

(The student, a college, that car, those people, whatever idea, your choice)

• Sometimes these words will tell us whether we are referring to a specific or general thing( The book, A horse! My kingdom); sometimes they

will tell how much and how many( lots of

sweets, many chairs, a great deal of

confusion).

Determiners

• A word or a group of words that introduces a noun. Determiners includes articles, demonstratives, quantifiers and possessive determiners. Determiners are functional classes not formal word classes.

• Determiner is a word that introduces a noun such as a/an, the, every, this those or many( as

a car, the car, this car, those cars, every

car, many cars).

(Determiner the is definite article and a/an

are indefinite articles).

Articles

• The three articles- a, an, the- are a kind of adjective. “ The” is called the definite article because it usually precedes a specific or previously mentioned noun. It is required when the noun it refers to represents something that is one of a kind: The moon circles the earth.

Cont…

• We use “ the” when we already mentioned the thing we are talking about.

She has got two children; a girl and a boy. The girl’s eight and the boy’s eighteen.

We use it to talk about

geographical points on the

globe( the north pole, the

equator).

Cont…

• To talk about rivers, oceans and seas( The Nile, The Pacific).

Before certain nouns

when we know there is

one of a particular thing

( the sun, the rain, the

wind).

Cont…

• “The is also used to say that a particular thing or person being mentioned is the best, most famous etc( Ahmar’s house is the place to go).

• Use to indicate a noun that is unique.

Praise the Lord.

The Columbia river.

Cont…

• Used to refer to a time period.

I was very energetic in the past.• Use to indicate all the members of a family.

I invited the Smiths for dinner.

Indefinite Articles

• “a” and “an” are the indefinite articles. They refer to something not specifically known to the person we are communicating with.

• a and an are used before nouns that introduce something or someone you have not mentioned before:

I saw an elephant in the morning.

I buy a pen from a shop.

Cont…

• an- used before singular count noun beginning with a vowel( a, e, I ,o ,u ) or vowel sound:

an apple, an honest man, an issue• a- used before singular count nouns beginning

with consonants( other than a, e, I, o, u).

a cup, a book, a pencil, a ball, a letter

Indefinite Article(a-an)

• Used before singular nouns that are unspecified:• A pencil • An orange• Used before number collectives and numbers:• a dozen• A gallon

Cont…

Possessive Determiners

• Words like my, our, your, his, her, it and there are known as possessive determiners. They come before nouns and indicate ownership of the noun in question, as their names suggest:

My leg hurts.

Moiz sold his house.

Bring your books with you.

These are our pencils.

She took her cake.

Demonstratives

• The demonstratives this, that, these, those, show where an object or person is in relation to the speaker.

• This( singular) and these( plural) refer to an object or person near the speaker. That( singular) and those( plural) refer to an object or person away from the speaker. It can be a

physical closeness or distance as in:

Who owns that house? (distant)

Is this Tashfeen’s house? (close)

Cont…

• Or it can be a psychological distance as in:• That’s nothing to do with me. ( distant)• This is a nice surprise. ( close)• The position of demonstratives is:

Before the noun

Before the word ‘one’

Before an adjective + noun

Alone when the noun is ‘understood’

Quantifiers

• A quantifier is a word(or phrase) which indicates a number or amount being referred to. It generally comes before noun( or noun phrase).

• Some, many, a lot of, a few are the examples of quantifiers.

• Quantifiers can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns.

There are some books on the desk.

He has got only a few books.

How much money have you got.

Cont…With uncountable nouns

With countable nouns

With both

much many All/ enough

A little/ a bit A few More /less

A great deal of A number of/several No/ not any

A large amount of A majority of/ a great number of

Some/ any

a large quantity of A large number of Lot of/ plenty of

The End