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Modifiers / Determiners / Articles

Dear Mr Paul:

Could you please distinguish the grammatical concepts: determiners, modifiers, and articles?

Thanks!

Re: Modifiers / Determiners / Articles

To explain everything about them would take too long and too much space, so I'll have to be brief. First 'determiners' and 'modifiers' are called 'dependents'. Dependents are elements in a phrase or clause, other than the head word, which are often optional, and sometimes obligatory.

DETERMINERS

The most common determiners are the articles "a" and "the". Their job is to mark a noun as indefinite or definite respectively. But there are many other words that we call determiners, like the demonstratives "this" and "that", quantitives like "some" and "any", degree determiners like "many", "much", "few" and little", possessives like "his", "her", "their" cardinal numbers, and a few other categories.

I saw a cat. (indefinite article)
I saw the cat. (definite article)
I like this/that car. (demonstrative)
We've got some milk. (quantifier)
We haven't got any milk. (negative quantifier)
He made many/few mistakes. (degree, count)
Kim has got little money. (degree, non-count)
Has Ed got much money? (degree, question)
This is my/his/their friend. (possessives)
I have one/two/three/etc children. (cardinal numbers)


MODIFIERS

Modifiers, as the name suggests, are optional words/phrases or clauses which add something to the meaning of another word, or phrase. Modifiers may be simple adjectives like "red", "big" or "new", or adverbs like "well", "very" "quickly". And even nouns and clauses can be modifiers.

Ed has a red/big/new car. (adjective pre-modifying noun)
People fond of animals. (adjective phrase post-modifying noun)
Food for the baby. (preposition phrase post-modifying noun)
Ed didn't play well. (adverb modifying verb)
Kim is very nice. (adverb modifying adjective)
A brick wall. (noun pre-modifying another noun)
That's the girl who I like. (relative clause modifying noun)


That's necessarily just a very brief guide; there are of course many other possibilities for modifiers.

I can recommend a good grammar website that goes into more detail than GM. It's called 'englicious'. It's free to join, and it's managed by University College London, so you're in safe hands! Here's a link:

http://www.englicious.org/

PaulM

Re: Modifiers / Determiners / Articles

Thank you very much!