Talk:English determiners

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Singular forms of nouns are often used with zero determiners in such phrases as Hand to mouth and man versus machine. Any thoughts?Tumpalion (talk) 17:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

This is gibberish: "....words or phrases that precede a noun or noun phrase and serve to express its reference in the context." Can anyone re-write this in understandable English?

Dominic Cronin (talk) 15:07, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Complete rewrite

I did a complete rewrite that clarifies the distinction between the category of words and their typical function in noun phrases. I also added citations throughout and removed the Refimprove tag.--Brett (talk) 02:40, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:English determiners/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Colin M (talk · contribs) 00:02, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Stay tuned for initial thoughts/feedback. :) Colin M (talk) 00:02, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

First round of comments (07/01)

Hey Brett, I'm excited to take on this review, as English grammar is a topic dear to my heart. I have a lot of comments, though that's not to say I think the article is in a bad state - it's just a long article (and appropriately so for such a big topic!).

These comments are mostly at the level of the trees rather than the forest. I still want to spend some time thinking about the overall shape of the article, and whether there are any major areas that are {un,under}-explored, so I will likely have at least one more round of comments on that within the next day or so.

I tried to keep these points in order wrt the article text, but apologies if any are out of order - I did some backtracking and jumping around. Feel free to intersperse replies inline if you find that easier.

Also, feel free of course to push back if you disagree with me on the substance of any of these comments, or if you think they're outside the scope of the WP:GACR.

I proactively made some small fixes as I went (mostly typo fixes, and adding a couple wikilinks). I expect them to be uncontroversial, but you may want to review them to be sure.

• Nitpick: the article is currently inconsistent about the inclusion of a comma after e.g.. (I personally find the version with comma to look awkward, but it looks like style guides are mixed and MOS doesn't mandate one way or the other - though I did find this unimaginably long debate about it.) Done
• Nitpick: I think the etc. in the first sentence is unnecessary. The "such as" already indicates a non-exhaustive list of examples. Done
• Readers of this article might not be familiar with the significance of an asterisk preceding an example. Perhaps the first occurrence could have an explanatory footnote explaining the usage with a link to Asterisk#Ungrammaticality? Done
• Perhaps worth mentioning in the intro that determiners are a closed class? Done
• Nitpick "v." should probably be expanded to "versus", per MOS:MISCSHORT. Same goes for the heading "Determiners vs other lexical categories" Done

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• The earliest inkling of this idea was expressed by Leon Kellner in 1892, using the term "determinative": Not entirely clear from context what "this idea" is referring to.  Done
• Leonard Bloomfield (1933) introduced the term determiner used in this article. Bold is not appropriate here. See MOS:BOLD. Done
• Is the boldface in the quotes in the "History" section present in the original texts? If so, I think it should technically use <strong> (again, per MOS:BOLD). Done
• (FWIW, I generally had a hard time following the "History" section (specifically the portion before the two subsections) on my first read-through, but I don't have any specific suggestions at this point. I'll circle back to this in my second round of comments.)
• The free-floating footnote in the "Terminological issues" section is pretty odd. Maybe it could be attached to the name of the author? Done
• An example might help illustrate why determiner vs. determinative are separate concepts. e.g. because a determiner can be used in a non-determinative function, or a word from a different lexical category can be used in a determinative function.
• Until the late 80s... Just to be safe, should probably specify 1980s. People might be reading this in 2121!  Done
• I think there's an argument that the "Terminological issues" and "Determiners as heads" sections don't really logically belong under the "History" heading. The former subsection at least seems to be talking about terminological confusion in modern sources, rather than a diachronic analysis of the terminology.Y Tried to clarify
• Are we giving sufficient weight to the generative grammar view? Honest question from someone who's pretty naive about generative grammar and the degree of acceptance/influence it has in the field. Maybe Most of what is said here is more or less applicable. To say more, I think you'd have to dive deep into theory, and that would make it inaccessible.

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• The key difference between adjectives and determiners in English is that adjectives cannot function as determinatives. This feels almost circular, since the only definition given so far for determinative is "the function that determiners and possessives typically perform in a noun phrase". Y Tried to clarify
  • Basically, between this point and the one two above, I think the article needs, early on, a clearer delineation of the lexical category vs the function (perhaps moving some content from the "Functions" subsection up?)
• For example, *I live in small house is ungrammatical because it is a singular countable NP lacking a determinative. I would take "it" to be referring to the whole example sentence, which I assume is not what you mean. (Maybe "because it contains a singular countable NP..." instead?) Done
• Morphologically, adjectives often inflect for grade, while few determiners do. Meaning of "inflect for grade" might not be clear to average reader. Example and/or wikilink could help. Done
• These characteristics have led linguists and grammarians like Ray Jackendoff and Steven Paul Abney to categorize such uses of we and you as determiners. It seems CGEL also takes this stance. Might be worth mentioning/citing (since it's a pretty authoritative/recognizable source, and the most cited work in the article) Done
• On the other hand, these words can show case contrast (e.g., us teachers), a feature that, in Modern English, is typical of pronouns but not of determiners Shouldn't modern be lowercase?  No (see Modern English)

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• I would suggest expanding the abbreviation in the heading "The syntax of determiners and DPs". A reader scanning the Table of Contents after reading the intro won't know what "DPs" stands for.  Done
• For the sake of this section, Abney's DP hypothesis (see §History) is set aside. When referring to another section within the article, it's good to include a hyperlink. You can do this with a plain wikilink that includes an anchor, though I personally like the {{slink}} template.  Done
• A few comments on the "Internal structure" subsection:
  • A determiner heads a determiner phrase (DP). Maybe clearer to say that it can head a DP? My understanding is that (in this analysis) determiners will often not have any dependents. But I don't think the text makes that clear. (Or are we taking the view that a bare determiner like the also forms a trivial DP? Edit: based on some later reading, it seems like this is the case. Maybe worth calling out? Doesn't even need to be explicitly stated as such, could just say that a DP is headed by a determiner and optionally takes dependents)  Done yes, single branching is assumed
  • Relate to the above: perhaps worth also including a tree diagram for the bare determiner case? (Not necessarily in this subsection)  Done
  • The diagrammed phrase here is tricky. So the most immediate problem is I'm pretty sure it's not a DP, but rather an NP. If we use the simpler example far less than ten mice, my understanding is that this would be an NP headed by mice, with the underlined portion being a DP dependent. The far less than half of it example is more complicated because I believe it involves a fused head partitive construction. Basically, I think this example needs to be replaced, and I would avoid fused heads (or, if you are going to include such an example, I would at least start with a basic, non-fused example first). [Though, disclaimer: I could be totally wrong about this. I'm not a real linguist, I just play one on Wikipedia. :)] Done
• while "determinative" is the function most typically performed by that determiner phrases Wording issue  Done
• (in the same way that "noun" denotes a category of words while "subject" denotes the most typical function of noun phrases I found this claim a little eyebrow-raising. CGEL functionally describes NPs as "prototypically capable, when placed in an appropriate case-form, of functioning as a complement in clause structure, i.e. as subject, object, or predicative complement". So referring to the subject function alone seems a little overly narrow? Y I changed it to adjectives and modifiers.
• In most cases, a singular, countable noun requires a determinative to form a noun phrase, though plurals and uncountables do not. Probably worth mentioning proper nouns here as well. Also worth including at least one example.  Done specified common noun
• Quirk et al. and Aarts also recognize the function of predeterminative (or predeterminer). Some linguists and grammarians offer different accounts of these constructions. Huddleston and Pullum, for instance, classify them as a kind of modifier in noun phrases. It's not clear how these approaches are different. Y I've simplified and tried to distinguish between Quirks subclasses and H&P's function.
• In many grammars, both traditional and modern, and in almost all dictionaries, such words are considered to be pronouns rather than determiners. Worth citing if possible.  No Seems like you'd have to cite a lot of sources that lack it.
  • My hope is that there would be a single source which states this fact (rather than the borderline WP:SYNTH-y approach of citing a bunch of grammar references and dictionaries that follow the approach described). Colin M (talk) 18:17, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

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• Article and demonstrative, then, can be considered subclasses or types of determiners. Reason for italics here isn't clear. I imagine it can be dropped.  Done
• Nitpick: wouldn't it make sense to put the "Predeterminers" subsection first? Or if you want to keep this section order, I would then at least change the order of the bulleted list in the section introduction. Done
• Articles include the following This makes it sound like the list is non-exhaustive. But there's just the two, right?  No I'd say so, but people have suggested a null article, and a few like The Grammar Book call unstressed some an article too.
  • In that case, could you add some text explaining this? The way it's written now, I think it's likely to leave readers wondering. And if they follow the link to English articles, the first sentence they'll read is The articles in English are the definite article the and the indefinite articles a and an. Colin M (talk) 18:21, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
    • I still think this needs some clarification. Also, since I don't have a copy of Oxford Modern English Grammar at hand, I wanted to ask: does it actually support the $\subsetneq$ claim? If so, I'm curious what wording they use. Colin M (talk) 01:03, 17 July 2021 (UTC)  Done Also, no, table 3.11 in Aarts just gives a and the.Brett (talk) 13:18, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
• The negative determiner is no with its independent form none. This is the only place "independent form" is mentioned, so it should probably be explained.  Done
• The placement of the "Morphological" section feels a bit odd, since it doesn't really parallel its sibling subsections. Maybe would make more sense as a separate top-level section? If so, I might even put it before the "Types of determiners" section so that readers are prepared when they encounter composite determiners like "a few". Done
• along with once, twice, and thrice I would give an example for this. When I see these words, my mind jumps to their adverbial meanings, rather than their use as multipliers.  Done
• “The theoretical distinction between grammatical definiteness and cognitive identifiability has the advantage of enabling us to distinguish between a discrete (grammatical) and a non-discrete (cognitive) category.” An extended quote like this should probably have in-text attribution. Though I think it would be even better to just replace it with a paraphrase.  Done
• Suggestion: even though there's a hatnote link at the top, I think it's also worth including a "See also" link to List of English determiners at the bottom.  Done

• Nitpick: the article uses curly quotes throughout but should use straight ones instead (MOS:CURLY). (Should be relatively easy to fix en masse with the find-and-replace tool in the source editor, but let me know if I can help.)  Done

Colin M (talk) 17:27, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you!--Brett (talk) 14:00, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Second round of comments (07/02)

Thanks for the quick response to the comments so far. A few more below. (The first section below being the only remaining issue of significant scope - the remaining things are, I hope, pretty easy fixes.)

Defining determiner and determinative

I still think you need a section (early on - I would argue even as the first section), giving an overview of the definition of determiner and determinative (as used in the article), with examples, including examples which show why the concepts don't map 1:1 (i.e. determiners used in non-determinative functions, and determinative functions played by something other than a determiner). I think the reader really needs to have a handle on this in order to be able to digest the later sections. The determinative function is mentioned a bunch in the article, and it's at the heart of the definition of the determiner category, but it doesn't get more than a one-sentence definition until about halfway through the article.  Done What do you think?--Brett (talk) 13:41, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

(Happy to discuss this further if you disagree.)

I see you added this to the intro (as a reworking/expansion of the sentence that was previously there about syntax):

Their most characteristic syntactic function is determinative (see § Terminological issues) in a noun phrase (NP). This function typically comes before any modifiers in the NP (e.g., some very pretty wool sweaters, not *very pretty some wool sweaters). A determinative is typically obligatory in a singular, countable, common noun phrase (compare I have a new cat to *I have new cat).

One thing that I think would help here would be just a slight wording change to make it clear that you're introducing a new concept, rather than referring to a concept which the reader is expected to already know about. e.g. The syntactic role characteristically played by determiners is known as the determinative function. A determinative combines with a noun (or, more formally, a nominal) to form a noun phrase, typically coming before any modifiers.... I think it would also help further motivate the distinction between determiner and determinative to mention examples from outside their union. e.g. This determinative function may also be filled by certain words belonging to other parts of speech, such as the noun Monday in Monday morning.

I do still think an early "Definitions" section that further elucidates/motivates the definitions of determiner vs. determinative would be really helpful, though it's not my place to mandate any particular way of structuring the information. Colin M (talk) 18:15, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

 Done I decided to do away with determinative as a function name and switched to specifier, which should be less confusing.Brett (talk) 17:52, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

History

Definitely found this easier to follow after your changes, but still have a few comments/suggestions

• As a rule of thumb, I think it's better to paraphrase rather than quote unless there's a good reason to do otherwise. Most of the quotes here do pass that test, since in the Kellner/Palmer/Bloomfield examples, the purpose is to show the specific wording that early linguists/grammarians used in the run-up to our current understanding of determiners. But I don't think the Matthews quote is necessary (particularly the second sentence, since it's just kind of a rhetorical flourish that only really applies within the context of the quoted work).  Done
• Cite for Kellner being the first instance of this idea? And similarly for Bloomfield being the inventor of the term determiner? (I saw that the latter is mentioned in Matthews, but I didn't see any mention there of Kellner)  Done
• My impression is that the italicization in the quotes here is a pretty small benefit which is maybe outweighed by the visual clutter of the "(emphasis added)" tags. But this is just a matter of taste, so I'll leave it up to you.  Done

All dealt with.--Brett (talk) 01:17, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

A few more comments on this section, as of the latest version:

• The Oxford English Dictionary cites Edward Sapir in 1921 as the first to use determinative. Should probably make it clear that he's not cited as the first to use that word period, but the first to use it in a grammatical sense.  Done removed
• I would question whether the Kellner quote is noteworthy here, at least in the absence of a secondary source that connects his work with the subject. The article is about the concept of determiners, not the words determiner and determinative, so IMO the "History" section should focus on the conceptual development of determiners moreso than the history of the terms.
• Linguist and historian Peter Matthews observes that the assumption that determiners are distinct from adjectives is new. "In a longer perspective they are an innovation of, in particular, the early 1960s." This is an odd way to lead off the history section given that the content that follows never mentions any research from the 60s. (Also, compare the later statement that Quirk 1985 "was the first work to explicitly conceive of determiner as a distinct lexical category". This doesn't exactly contradict the Matthews quote, but it's at least liable to leave the reader with questions.)  Done I've added in discussion of Long and Strang the Matthews relies on.Brett (talk) 18:23, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if you've checked it out already, but Denison's chapter on determiners in The Handbook of the History of English seems to be a good source for the history of determiners, particularly from the PoV of language change, which is a perspective not really mentioned in the section currently.

Colin M (talk) 18:40, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Misc other

• Nitpick: at different points in the text you interchangeably ascribe views to "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" or to "Huddleston and Pullum", and similarly for "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" vs. "Quirk et al." I think this is fine, but maybe at first mention of each of those two works you should also mention the authors, so readers can make the connection?
• The main reason for classifying these possessive words as determiners is that both can function as determinative I find this sentence a bit confusing. Both what? Both possessives and determiners? But we're saying possessives are determiners.  Done
• Small thing, but in the "Various quantificational expressions" section, I think it could be made clearer that sentences 2-4 are not being stated as facts in wikivoice, but are rather a continued presentation of a particular point of view. (I realize it would be awkward to preface every sentence with "In this view,...", but I think there are other solutions - e.g. replacing "is a noun phrase" with "would be a noun phrase"?)  Done
• "Thing, was combined in Old English with some, any, and no, but not yet with every; this was only established in Chaucer's time." A quote like this should have in-text attribution (though again, I think it's preferable to paraphrase instead).  Done
• Shouldn't the headings that follow "Syntactic and semantic types" (starting from "Central determiners") be descendants rather than siblings? I realize this would make for some very deep nesting, but if you wish, I still think it would be fine to promote the morphology info to a top-level section, allowing you to collapse the step from Types of determiners > Syntactic and semantic types.  Done
• Not 100% sure on this, but I think it would be more conventional to put the Wiktionary link in the "External links" section (for example, that's typically where I see links to wikisource). Alternatively, if you're not going to have any ELs, then the EL section heading should be removed.  Done

Colin M (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

All done. I'll be away from editing for a week.--Brett (talk) 13:43, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the updates. I added some further comments in the sections above about determiner vs. determinative and the history section, which are my only two areas of concern at this point. One other minor note: the new image in the "Determinative" section is pretty huge. I think it would still be easily legible at about half its current size. But in terms of available tools/templates/syntax, I'm not sure the best way to go about this. You could do something like [[File:Tree_diagram_for_"even_all_the_preposterous_salary_from_LLoyds_that_Bill_gets".png|thumb|center|700px]], though that adds a frame around the image which you probably don't want. The only other option I can think of is to upload a lower-resolution version. Colin M (talk) 18:52, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I think everything has been addressed now.Brett (talk) 18:30, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Third round (07/12)

I like the changes to the intro. I still think the presentation of the determinative (aka specifier) function in the body could be clearer and earlier in the article, but this might just be getting into personal taste territory - I at least don't think it's such a problem as to violate WP:GACR 1a or 3a.

I agree with the concern raised by Whmovement on the talk page about the move to specifier over determinative. It does seem a bit questionable given that it's strongly associated with X-bar theory (which is not the main framework used within the article) and seems to be generally less commonly used than determinative. I also agree that a mass find-and-replace could lead to some verifiability issues. Do you think the two terms are sufficiently interchangeable that we can take some claim about determinatives from source X and use it as a citation for a parallel claim about specifiers?

My main remaining concern is with the history section. Some of the claims seem like borderline WP:OR. I don't think I was clear enough about this above, but if we're going to claim e.g. that Kellner possibly planted the seed of the idea of determiners in his 1892 grammar, I think we need a secondary cite for his work having that place in history - rather than just citing Kellner 1892 itself. And similarly for Palmer and Bloomfield.

Also, a nitpick re the Matthews quote in the last paragraph: it seems to be out of order. "this may seem to have been forgotten" appears after the text that follows the ellipsis. Colin M (talk) 19:33, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

The recent edits by User:Whmovement look like they address these issues.Brett (talk) 11:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Those recent edits look great. I want to do one more thorough pass over the article (and may not be able to do so for a few days). One small issue I noticed when reviewing the new "Terminology" section is that it uses the term "syntactic category", whereas "lexical category" is used throughout the rest of the article. I think it would be clearer to use the same term throughout (or if we're going to diverge in using "syntactic category" in the Terminology section, we should wikilink it and briefly explain the distinction). Colin M (talk) 15:39, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

• Okay, I think this is almost ready to go. The one small issue I'd still like to see resolved is the way we define the article category (I bumped the thread about this above). Once that's taken care of I'll be happy to sign off on this. Also, I made a few small (and hopefully uncontroversial) changes during my final readthrough - but you may want to review them to make sure you agree with them. Colin M (talk) 01:26, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for all your very helpful work on reviewing this!--Brett (talk) 13:21, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

 It's good! I'm satisfied that this meets all the GA criteria. Thank you for your patience in sticking through what turned out to be a pretty involved review. In my view, a topic like this is really hard to bring up to GA status compared to an article about, say, a song, a person, or a river. There's no standard formula for how to structure an article like this. It's not just rattling off a series of dates, facts, and figures - it actually entails teaching the reader a whole new concept. That's so hard! Anyways, that's all to say this is no mean feat, so big congrats. Also, thanks Whmovement for your help in pushing this over the line. Colin M (talk) 23:39, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Determinative vs. specifier

A recent edit replaced the functional label "determinative" with "specifier". Based on the GA discussion, I assume that that this was done to avoid the determiner/determinative terminology issue. I see three reasons to prefer addressing the determiner/determinative distinction in the article rather than side-stepping it with the term "specifier".

(1) The term "specifier" is fairly theory-specific. As far as I'm aware, it is only used in theories that incorporate X-bar notation. Somebody trained in, say, Systemic Functional Grammar (or some other theory of syntax) would likely recognize the functional label determiner or determinative but probably would not be familiar with the notion of specifier as it is used here. In short, determiner/determinative seems to be the more widely used term. (2) As I understand it, theories that do use the term "specifier" in this way tend to also follow Abney's analysis of nominals as D taking an NP complement rather than DP as a specifier of N. Thus, it seems a bit strange for the article to use the term "specifier" as a functional label when theories that use that label tend to treat these specifiers as heads rather than specifiers. In short, the people who actually use "specifier" as a functional label would probably not apply it to many of the things called specifiers in this article. (3) Some of the most cited sources in the article do not actually use "specifier" or any substantially similar term, so a find-and-replace swap of the terms risks misattribution. Of course, we cannot avoid this entirely if our goal is consistent use throughout the article, but we can minimize it: using the label "determinative" when the cited source uses "determiner" (or vice-versa) does not imply that the source assumes a particular theory of syntax, but using the label "specifier" does.

Given the ongoing GA review, I thought it made sense to raise the point here rather than simply editing the article. Whmovement (talk) 19:50, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

@Whmovement: You make a number of good points. In response, I would put forward the following: (1) I think clarity and ease of reading for a general reader should trump the theory-specific sensibilities of the linguist reader, and I think the consistent use of a single term for the function is the best way to achieve that. If we need to choose a single functional term, then determiner + specifier seems much easier to follow than determiner + determinative. (2) The determinative / determiner issue is addressed directly, and the choice of specifier is explicityly explained. (3) Specifier is used in this way by Culicover and Jackendoff in Simpler Syntax (e.g., "Consider the structure of the comparative phrase. More and less, as usual, are quantifiers; they can occur in the specifier of NP (44a)").

That being said, and GA review notwithstanding, be bold. If you can find a good solution to this dilema, that would be great.Brett (talk) 21:12, 11 July 2021 (UTC)