Re: Demonstrative Pronouns and Demonstrative Adjectives
Balasubramanian
Dear Sir/Madam,
I had taken your help earlier also and your site is very helpful.
I want to know the difference between Demonstrative Pronouns and Demonstrative Adjectives.
Am I correct in understanding that, in case of Demonstrative adjective, a noun immediately follows the Demonstrative Pronoun.
For example:
Demonstrative Pronoun: This is my book.
Demonstrative Adjective: This book is mine.
In the 2nd example as the noun book immediately follows 'This', it is a demonstrative Adjective. In the 1st example, as the noun does not come immediately after 'This', it is not a demonstrative Adjective.
My question is: is this the right way of identifying the difference between these two? Or is there any other way of identifying the difference?
Please help me with this.
In traditional grammar, the "this" in your 1st example is called a pronoun, and in your 2nd example an adjective . But in modern grammar, we call "this" a determiner: in your examples a 'fused head' determiner and a 'demonstrative' determiner respectively.
Demonstrative determiners normally precede nouns: they do not modify them, but simply mark them as definite. Fused head determiners do not precede a noun, instead the noun is implicit. Thus "This is my book" is understood as "This book is mine". The fusion is between the two words "this" and "book" to give the single word "This".
That's how modern grammar analyses "this" as used in your examples.