SELECTING AND PARTICULARISING THE REFERENT
The determiner
THE DETERMINER FUNCTION
Common nouns in the dictionary refer to classes of things, but when they are used in discourse they need to be particularized. This is done by the first element of the nominal group, called the determiner. The basic function of this element is to particularize and so help to identify the NG referent in the context of the speech situation.
As in other areas of the grammar, we distinguish between a function, in this case the determiner, and the classes of units, here called determinatives, which realize the function.
Determiners identify a nominal group referent by telling us which or what or whose it is, how much, how many, what part or degree of it we are referring to, how big or frequent it is, how it is distributed in space or time. The following short passage from The Time-Traveler’s Wife illustrates some American uses:
Henry: The ceremony is at 2:00 p.m. and it will take me about half an hour to dress and twenty minutes for us to drive over to St. Basil’s. It is now 7:16 a.m., which leaves five hours and forty-four minutes to kill. I throw on jeans and a skanky old flannel shirt and high-tops and creep as quietly as possible downstairs seeking coffee. Dad has beat me to it; he’s sitting in the breakfast room with his hands wrapped round a dainty cup of steaming black joe. I pour one for myself and sit across from him. Through the lace-curtained windows the weak light gives Dad a ghostly look; he’s a colorized version of a black-and- white movie of himself this morning. His hair is standing up every which way and without thinking I smooth mine down, as though he were a mirror. He does the same, and we smile.
