Determiners

Key Topics

Determiners 1 Kinds of Determiners

Pre-determiners:
What are determiners? 2 Both, All
Articles and its types

Demonstratives
Difference between Few, a Few
and The Few 3
Possessive Adjectives/Determiners

Difference between Little, a Interrogatives

Little and The Little
4
Quantifiers:
Some, Any, Many / Few, Most / Several

Distributives:
Either / Neither and Each / Every
 Determiners

▪ Used before a noun/noun phrase to determine its meaning and nature.

▪ Used before a noun/noun phrase to identify whether it is specific or general in nature.
▪ Can be seen working like adjectives.

The words ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘my’, ‘this’, ‘some’, ‘many’, etc. are called determiners:
✔ He is a good boy.
✔ The boy you met is my friend.
✔ This novel is very interesting.
 Adverb

Noun Verb

Conjunction
Parts of Interjection
Speech

Adjective Preposition

Pronoun
 Parts of Speech

Noun Pronoun Adjectives

A word that refers to a thing, a person, an Words which are used in place or Words which are used to add
animal, a place, a quality, an idea or an action. instead of Noun. meaning to Noun and Pronoun
It's usually a single word, but not always.

Uncountable Margot wore a beautiful hat to the

Countable Nouns Nouns I, We, You, He, She, It, Name,
They pie-eating contest

Singular: boy, radius

Plural: boys, radii Sugar, Rice, Water, Oil
 Types of Determiners

a, an, the little, much

Articles Quantitatives

The article system in English consists of the definite The quantitatives refer to the quantity of things or
article ‘the’ and the indefinite article ‘a’ or ‘an. amount of something.

✔ They didn’t make much progress.

The is used to refer to specific or particular nouns; a/an ✔ There was little water in the jug.
is used to modify non-specific or non-particular nouns.

✔ The boys were not in the class.

✔ The girl bought an orange.
 Types of Determiners

where, what, which, This, that, these,

My, yours, its, ours, their whose those

Possessive Interrogatives Demonstrative

A possessive determiner is used to show An interrogatives is employed in The demonstrative determiners are
your possession or ownership of someone order to modify the noun or used to talk about persons or things
or something. It indicates that it belongs to the pronoun by asking a question. that have already been mentioned.
that particular person and no one else. This and These refer to the things
that are near and can be seen. ‘That’
and ‘Those’ are used to refer to the
✔ What subjects are you studying? things that are at a distance but can
✔ Do you know its value? ✔ Which colour do you like the be seen.
✔ Their house is very big. most?

✔ We lived in this house for four

years.
✔ She bought these books.
✔ Those boys are very mischievous.
 Types of Determiners

Numerals

The article system in English consists of the definite article ‘the’ and the indefinite article ‘a’ or ‘an.

Definite Distributive
Indefinite
The distributive numeral adjectives
Definite numeral adjectives Indefinite numeral adjectives are include certain words like each,
are made use of to denote utilized to define various topics either, every, and neither, which are
exact number or position of however they do not give any kind of used to distribute substances or
the subject in the sentence. particular count worth. anything else.

first, second some, few, many every, each, either

 Difference between Few, a Few and The Few

Few, a few and the few – at first glance, these words seem like they have the same meaning. However, these words
do have differences, even if they are subtle.
The word ‘few’ is used as a quantifier, i.e., a word that is typically used to express the quantity of an object. In this case, ‘few’
emphasizes a small number of things. When the article ‘a’ is added, the meaning changes to ‘some.’ When the article ‘the’
precedes ‘few’, then the meaning changes to ‘not many’.

Few A Few The Few

Meaning Small number of something Some Not many

Example 1 Smoking is just one of I’ve got a few questions to She wants to spend the
his few bad habits. ask. few days left to her in
solitude.

Example 2 Few people have seen this I have a few places in The few words that she
trail. mind. spoke are deeply ingrained
in my head.
 Difference between Little, a Little and The Little

The simple difference between the terms ‘little’ and ‘a little’ is that the former has a negative tone to it, and the latter has a
positive meaning.

When ‘little’ is used, it means hardly any or minute amount. For example, “There is little hope that the patient will survive.” Here,
‘little’ means that there’s hardly any hope that the patient will survive. But if one uses ‘a little’ in a sentence, it means some or small
quantity. So if we use ‘a little’ in the same example, i.e. “There is a little hope that the patient will survive.” Then it means there’s
some chance or small chance that the patient might survive. Now, “the little” means not much but all that is there.
Example: The little grain he had was spoiled in the rain.

Little A Little The Little

Meaning The word little means a bit The term a little means “The little” means not much
of or hardly any amount. some or a small quantity. but all that is there

Example We have little time left to There’s a little chance that The little grain he had was
finish the task. the boy will win spoiled in the rain.
 Thank You,
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