determiner (n.) (det, DET, D)

A term used in some models of GRAMMATICAL description, referring to a class of ITEMS whose main role is to CO-OCCUR with NOUNS to express a wide range of SEMANTIC contrasts, such as QUANTITY or NUMBER. The ARTICLES, when they occur in a LANGUAGE, are the main subset of determiners (e.g. the/a in English); other WORDS which can have a determiner function in English include each/every, this/that, some/any, all of which have a distribution which includes the article position, e.g. the/this/some . . . cake. Some LINGUISTS extend the application of this term to include other types of word within the noun PHRASE (e.g. ADJECTIVES, PREdeterminers), and sometimes even to include MODIFIERS in other parts of the sentence. In some GENERATIVE GRAMMAR theories, determiner is regarded as the head in combination with a noun, to produce a determiner phrase (DP). The DP hypothesis is the proposal that noun phrases are PROJECTIONS of the determiner.