Search results for 'tag:Possessives tag:Determiners' matching tags 'Possessives' and 'Determiners'

Re: Possesive pronoun

CalifJim — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:28:31 GMT

Huevos
Mister Micawber
are determiners
Just a terminology thing: CJ says possessive adjectives whereas you say determiners. What makes these determiners?

Possessive adjectives are just one class of determiners. Articles, demonstrative adjectives, numbers, and quantifiers are other classes of determiners.

my, his, ..., a, an, the, this, that, these, those, one, two, three, ..., some, all, every, many, ... are all determiners.

So there is no conflict between my focus on the possessive and adjectival properties and Mr. M.'s focus on the superclass called determiners.

(Technically, a determiner is not an adjective -- not a central case of "adjective" anyway (like red and round) -- so maybe 'possessive determiner' and 'demonstrative determiner' are better terms. It all depends on which author you read. They all have different preferences as regards terminology.)

Re: Possesive pronoun

Huevos — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:14:30 GMT

Mister Micawber
are determiners

Just a terminology thing: CJ says possessive adjectives whereas you say determiners. What makes these determiners?

Re: Ending a grammar argument

MrPedantic — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:51:42 GMT

Hello Branwen319, welcome to English Forums! (Are there really 318 other Branwens here?)

No comma is needed; "your" is a possessive pronoun, and "no" is an indefinite determiner (i.e. they're not adjectives).

Two or more qualitative adjectives may be separated by a comma, e.g. "a long, thin piece of wood"; but if we use "my" instead of "a", it does not need to be followed by a comma, any more than "a" does (thus "my long, thin piece of wood", if for some reason we need to specify such a thing).

The trick is to treat the comma as a pause. Does your boyfriend pause after "your", when he says "your normal routine"? I doubt it. Better to save all those commas and cut down on toner.

Good luck!

MrP

Re: I need clarification on this

Cool Breeze — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:50:01 GMT

Buddhaheart wrote:
1. We really appreciate your giving us your opinion regarding this issue. OK

2. We really appreciate you giving us your opinion regarding this issue. Not OK

What comes after the main verb âappreciateâ is a noun phrase âyour giving â¦â. âGivingâ is a gerund acting as a noun. What precedes a noun must be a determiner and in this case âyourâ. âYouâ is a pronoun and therefore is incorrect.

Hi Buddhaheart

Your is a possessive form of you. By the same logic, I assume, you would also say:

We really appreciate the French's giving us their opinion regarding this issue.

CB

Re: Is it necessary to use the in the above sentence?

CalifJim — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:42:34 GMT

All countable singular nouns in English require a determiner (article, possessive adjective, etc.).

definition is a noun.
definition is countable.
definition is singular.

Therefore, definition requires a determiner. My preference is to write this:

Please explain the definition above.

CJ

Re: For once and for all, can someone explain what determiners are??

Mister Micawber — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:30:03 GMT

Well, the excerpt you have posted is not very well thought through. Possessives here are obviously an open class-- my friend's, John's, Mary's, my dog's, his aardvark's, ad infinitum-- as are cardinal and ordinal numbers-- eight-hundred-and-forty-first, eight-hundred-and-forty-second....

However, possessive nouns (my friend's, etc) are not normally included among determiners, which are usually restricted to the finite pronouns: my, your, his, her, its, our, their, one's and whose. I would also guess that some grammarians consider the numbers separately-- when they are called post-determiners. That would bring us to a closed class of about 50 determiners-- 3 articles, 4 demonstratives, a few interrogative/relatives (which, etc), 9 possessive pronouns, and a finite list of quantifiers and miscellania.

Therefore: altogether there are about 50 determiners like this > a, an, the, this, that, these, those, which, my, your, our, their, his, hers, whose, etc.

For once and for all, can someone explain what determiners are??

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:32:37 GMT

I've read many textbooks, done a lot of searches and I have yet to find a suitable answer to my question. Can a knowledgable grammarian please answer this question. What are determiners?

I took this part from a textbook....

There are about 50 different determiners in the English language they include:

Articles: a, an, the
Demonstratives: this, that, these, those, which etc.
Possessives: my, your, our, their, his, hers, whose, my friend's, our friends', etc.
Quantifiers:few, a few, many, much, each, every, some, any etc.
Numbers: one, two, three, twenty, forty
Ordinals: first, second, 1st 2nd, 3rd, last, next, etc.

Are they saying there are 50 different determiners including these six > articles/demonstratives/possessives/quantifiers/numbers/ordinals

Or are they saying altogether there are 50 determiners like this > a, an, the, this, that, these, those, which, my, your, our, their, his, hers, whose, my friend's, our friends' etc....

I think it's the first case but I need clarrification from someone

Re: two questions

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:43:10 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
1. There is a salesman at the door. There are several salesmen at the door.

2. Both president's and Republicans' are possessives.

the Japan's product is incorrect. Both articles and possessives are determiners. You can't have more than one determiner in succession.

an X's Y = the Y of an X.
the X's Y = the Y of the X.

Thank you, CalifJim. Can your formulas above work for cases noting a purpose or classification like this one:

a girl's school

Following your formula, this would be:

the school of a girl and that wouldn't be right, would it? So, your formulas are limited in function to those that are possessives in the sense that one is possessing the other. OK?

Hence,

a hen's egg = the egg of a hen
the prosecutor's argument = the argument of the prosecutor

CJ

Re: two questions

CalifJim — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:08:22 GMT

1. There is a salesman at the door. There are several salesmen at the door.

2. Both president's and Republicans' are possessives.

the Japan's product is incorrect. Both articles and possessives are determiners. You can't have more than one determiner in succession.

an X's Y = the Y of an X.
the X's Y = the Y of the X.

Hence,

a hen's egg = the egg of a hen
the prosecutor's argument = the argument of the prosecutor

CJ

Part of Speech identification

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:16:08 GMT

Hello, this is my first post here, I like to know these words
kilometer
centimeter

Are those words noun if they are standing alone ? if it's, what kind of noun it's, proper noun or abstract noun or etc ?

After that, I want to indentify the part of speech of the following setence by using the stanfard parser at http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/index.jsp
if you input,
convert kilometer to centimeter
it gives convert/VB kilometer/NN to/TO centimeter/VB

if you input,
convert 2 kilometers to centimeter
it gives convert/VB 2/CD kilometers/NNS to/TO centimeter/NN

You can refer to the tagset below, my question is, is the first input setence correct ? if it's correct the part of speech given by the program seems to be incorrect because
the centimeter should be noun instead of Verb, or am I wrong ? If you add the "2" as the second input the program gives the correct part of speech tagging,
it it because my first input grammar is incorrect ? Thank you.

Reference

1. CC  Coordinating conjunction  25.TO  to 
2. CD  Cardinal number           26.UH  Interjection 
3. DT  Determiner                27.VB  Verb, base form 
4. EX  Existential there   28.VBD Verb, past tense 
5. FW  Foreign word              29.VBG Verb, gerund/present participle 
6. IN  Preposition/subord.   30.VBN Verb, past participle 
218z     conjunction 
7. JJ  Adjective                 31.VBP Verb, non-3rd ps. sing. present 
8. JJR Adjective, comparative    32.VBZ Verb, 3rd ps. sing. present 
9. JJS Adjective, superlative    33.WDT wh-determiner 
10.LS  List item marker          34.WP  wh-pronoun 
11.MD  Modal                     35.WP  Possessive wh-pronoun 
12.NN  Noun, singular or mass    36.WRB wh-adverb 
13.NNS Noun, plural              37. #  Pound sign 
14.NNP Proper noun, singular     38. $  Dollar sign 
15.NNPS Proper noun, plural      39. .  Sentence-final punctuation 
16.PDT Predeterminer             40. ,  Comma 
17.POS Possessive ending         41. :  Colon, semi-colon 
18.PRP Personal pronoun          42. (  Left bracket character 
19.PP  Possessive pronoun        43. )  Right bracket character 
20.RB  Adverb                    44. "  Straight double quote 
21.RBR Adverb, comparative       45. `  Left open single quote 
22.RBS Adverb, superlative       46. "  Left open double quote 
23.RP  Particle                  47. '  Right close single quote 
24.SYM Symbol  48. "  Right close double quote