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a; a few; a little; all; an; another; any; anybody; anyone; anything; anywhere; both; certain (also adjective) each; either; enough; every; everybody; everyone ...
For example, the determiners each, enough, less, and more can function as post-head modifiers of noun phrases, as in the determiner phrase each in two seats each. [ 7 ] : 132 Enough can fill the same role in adjective phrases (e.g., clear enough ) and in adverb phrases (e.g., funnily enough ).
A determiner combines with a noun to express its reference. [1] [2] Examples in English include articles (the and a), demonstratives (this, that), possessive determiners (my, their), and quantifiers (many, both). Not all languages have determiners, and not all systems of grammatical description recognize them as a distinct category.
The position of the determiner, in contrast, is fixed; it has to introduce the phrase, e.g. *friendly an old dog, *old friendly a dog, etc. The fact that the determiner's position at the left-most periphery of the phrase is set is taken as an indication that it is the head of the phrase.
Other possessive determiners (although they may not always be classed as such though they play the same role in syntax) are the words and phrases formed by attaching the clitic-'s (or sometimes just an apostrophe after -s) to indefinite pronouns, nouns or noun phrases (sometimes called determiner phrases). Examples include Jane's, heaven's, the ...
The articles in English are the definite article the and the indefinite articles a and an.They are the two most common determiners.The definite article is the default determiner when the speaker believes that the listener knows the identity of a common noun's referent (because it is obvious, because it is common knowledge, or because it was mentioned in the same sentence or an earlier sentence).
An example is land in the phrase land mines given above. Examples of the above types of modifiers, in English, are given below. It was [a nice house]. (adjective modifying a noun, in a noun phrase) [The swiftly flowing waters] carried it away. (adjectival phrase, in this case a participial phrase, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
For example, the determiner phrase two in the noun phrase these two images functions as a pre-head modifier. While determiners that occur before nouns tend to function as determinatives, noun phrases can contain only one determinative, so additional determiner phrases must have some other function.