Determiners
In English, many noun phrases begin with an ARTICLE (a or the) or a DEMONSTRATIVE (this or that). Articles and demonstratives are the most common types of determiners. English QUANTIFIERS (some, all, no, many, few, etc.) also function as determiners, though in some other languages determiners and quantifiers belong to distinct categories.
Determiners typically provide information about definiteness, number (singular vs. plural), and (in the case of demonstratives) distance from the speaker. In some languages they also indicate other grammatical information.
Determiners do not behave like typical adjuncts, because the choice of determiner is often limited by the grammatical and semantic properties of the head noun. For example, we noted the important distinction between MASS NOUNS, which cannot be pluralized (e.g. ∗these rices), vs. COUNT NOUNS, which can be pluralized (e.g. these dogs). Mass and count nouns require different determiners. Count nouns cannot be used in the singular with the determiner some, nor can they appear in the singular form without a determiner. Mass nouns, on the other hand, cannot occur with determiners such as a, many, few, or numerals (three, eight, etc.).
On the other hand, determiners do not behave like typical complements either. Some linguists analyze determiners as being heads of a phrasal category DetP, which takes the rest of the NP as its complement. We will simply treat determiners as a new type of dependent, which is neither a complement nor an adjunct.
