1 Determiners
& Quantifiers
Determiners modify nouns by setting a
limitation over the nouns to indicate how specific or general they are. A
determiner usually appears at the beginning of the noun phrases and works as an adjective to modify the nouns.
However, determiners are not necessary for every noun phrase.
Determiners include:
a. The definite article: the
Example:
o Give
me the book I read to you yesterday. (Specific book)
o I want
the pencil you borrowed yesterday.
b. The indefinite
articles: a, an
Example:
o Give
me a book from the shelf. (A general/random book from a specific shelf)
o I want
an apple.
c. The
possessives: my, your, his, her, our, their, its, whose
Example:
o My car
is parked outside. (Specific car)
o His
house is near the bridge.
d. The
demonstratives: this, that, these, those
Example:
o This
is my book.
o That
house belongs to me.
o Those ducks
are beautiful.
e. Interrogatives: which, what
Example:
o Which
car do you want to buy?
o What
product do you use?
Determiners and Quantifiers Exercise
Quantifiers are also
determiners which modify a noun to indicate its quantity. The quantifiers
are any, all, many, much, most, some, a
few, and a lot of, a little, a large amount of, none, and the cardinal
numbers [one, two, three, four], etc.
Example:
o I have
some money but not a lot of it.
o Many
people died in that calamity.
Note: There are some rules for
using determiners and quantifiers. Some of them can be used only with countable
nouns and some of them with uncountable nouns while others can be used with
either of them. Here is a chart for the determiners to be used with countable
or uncountable nouns.
|
With Countable Nouns |
With Uncountable Nouns |
|
a/an, the |
the |