There's a part of speech in English that I didn't know about before about a week ago. It's called the determiner. Some examples (quoting Wikipedia):
- Articles: a, an, the
- Demonstratives: this, that, these, those...
- Possessive determiners: her, his, its, my, our, their, your
- Quantifiers: all, few, many, several, some, every...
- Numbers: one, two, fifty...
- Ordinals: first, second, last, next...
I always figured they were just adjectives. But in English, determiners appear at the very start of a noun phrase, before any adjectives. Here's a quote; some noun phrases are in bold. The words in red are the determiners.
What are man and woman if not members of two very different and warring tribes? Yet decade after decade, century after century, they attempt in marriage to reconcile and forge a union. Why? I don't know. Biological imperative? Divine law? Or just a desire to connect to that mysterious other? In any case, it's always struck me as a hopeful thing.
—Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, writing for the TV show Northern Exposure
This has implications for programming languages, but I'll skip it. Olivia and I are rewatching Northern Exposure show by show, courtesy of Netflix. Great stuff.
2 comments:
This is very interensting! I had no idea that there is a part of speech called the determiner.
wow, i didn't even know about determiners existed. i have never head of them before. i was never taught them in school. i was only taught about adjectives. i love adjectives and i think they are the easiest thing to point out in a sentence besides the noun. but now i can look at a sentence more carefully and find determiners before the adjectives and have something new. that is pretty cool. thanks for the post.
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