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For example, the articles a and the have more in common with each other than with the demonstratives this or that, but both belong to the class of determiner and, thus, share more characteristics with each other than with words from other parts of speech. Article and demonstrative, then, can be considered subclasses or types of determiners.
In English, for example, the words my, your etc. are used without articles and so can be regarded as possessive determiners whereas their Italian equivalents mio etc. are used together with articles and so may be better classed as adjectives. [4] Not all languages can be said to have a lexically distinct class of determiners.
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).
The definite article can also be used in English to indicate a specific class among other classes: The cabbage white butterfly lays its eggs on members of the Brassica genus. However, recent developments show that definite articles are morphological elements linked to certain noun types due to lexicalization. Under this point of view ...
There are also many phrases (such as a couple of) that can play the role of determiners. Determiners are used in the formation of noun phrases (see above). Many words that serve as determiners can also be used as pronouns (this, that, many, etc.). Determiners can be used in certain combinations, such as all the water and the many problems.
A noun can co-occur with an article or an attributive adjective. Verbs and adjectives cannot. In the following, an asterisk (*) in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical. the name (name is a noun: can co-occur with a definite article the) *the baptise (baptise is a verb: cannot co-occur with a definite article)
Possessive determiners, as used in English and some other languages, imply the definite article.For example, my car implies the car of mine. (However, "This is the car I have" implies that it is the only car you have, whereas "This is my car" does not imply that to the same extent.
As a language evolves, cases can merge (for instance, in Ancient Greek, the locative case merged with the dative), a phenomenon known as syncretism. [ 4 ] Languages such as Sanskrit , Kannada , Latin , Tamil , Russian and Sinhala have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of ...