Determiners vs Pronouns

Determiners can be defined as the words which are normally used before the noun to specify its reference in a sentence and on the other side pronouns are those words that are used in place of nouns to avoid their repetitions in a text containing multiple sentences or a large composite sentence. Before understanding determiners vs pronouns, we should know the concept of determiners and pronouns. In the following article, we will learn about determiners and pronouns along with their examples.

(Image will be uploaded soon)

What are Determiners?

Determiners are the keywords used generally before the noun in a sentence to enhance or specify its reference. Determiners generally show possessiveness, quality, ownership or specificity of the nouns they are placed before.

Types of Determiners

On the basis of the nature of specificity they give, determiners can be classified into the following eight types:

1. Definite Article

A definite article is used either for universal objects or an obvious one in a specific context. ‘The’ is the keyword used as a definite article in the English Language.

Eg:

• The moon is a natural satellite.

• The Lake has cold water.

2. Indefinite Article

Indefinite articles are used to refer to an instance of items belonging to a particular group, type or collection. Keywords used as indefinite articles are ‘a’ and ‘an’.

Eg:

•  A man was asking for juice at the bar.

• An artist was invited to perform at the party.

3. Distributives

Distributives are those keywords that are used to specify the distribution of reference among some (or all) objects belonging to a particular group, collection or category. ‘Either’, ‘neither’, ‘each’, ‘every’, etc are some examples of distributives.

Eg:

• All engineers in the company were from India.

• Either of you must not go out without my permission.

• Every student passed the examinations.

• Both kids are sleeping.

4. Demonstratives

Demonstratives are used to directly point out or target a particular thing, place, person, etc. Examples of demonstratives are ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’, ‘those’, etc.

Eg:

• This place is not new to me.

• That boy is my new neighbour.

• These flowers are from his nursery.

5. Possessives

Possessives are the keywords that define ownership or possession. Keywords like ‘His’, ‘her’, ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘our’, ‘their’ ‘its’, etc are used to tell whom something belongs to in a sentence, hence they are called possessives.

Eg:

• His house is too big.

• My notebooks are kept on the table.

• Your sister saw us at the cafe.

• Our school is a catholic one.

6. Quantifiers

Quantifiers, as the name suggests, are those keywords that tell us the number of things (definite or indefinite). Examples of such keywords are ‘some’, ‘few’, ‘much’, ‘little’, ‘many’, ‘more’, ‘half’, ‘none’, ‘less’, ‘any’, ‘enough’, ‘all’, ‘most’, ‘double’, ‘both’, ‘several’, etc.

Eg:

• There was little water remaining in the pot.

• Several soldiers went marching by the palace.

• Enough stuff was available to cook the dinner.

• Many people are still vegetarian in India.

7. Numbers

Numbers are special cases of quantifiers. The main difference is that they are definite. For example, ‘Two’, ‘three’, ‘first’, ‘second’, etc.

Eg:

• Two monkeys seized the bag from her and climbed up the tree.

• The first girl in each row will lead the queue.

8. Exclamatives

Keywords like ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘such, etc are often used in non-interrogative forms, i.e., as exclamatives.

Eg:

• What a shame!

• Don’t talk such nonsense to me!

• How amazing you are!

What are Pronouns?

Pronouns are the keywords used in place of nouns to avoid their repetitions in a text containing multiple sentences or a large composite sentence. Examples of pronouns are ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘we’, ‘it’, ‘them’, ‘us’, ‘who’, etc.

Eg:

• He did not attend the party yesterday.

• We shall go for shopping tomorrow

• They were laughing at him.

• You are not supposed to talk like this to her.

Types of Pronouns

1. Possessive pronouns.

2. Personal pronouns.

3. Relative pronouns.

4. Reflexive pronouns.

5. Indefinite pronouns.

6. Demonstrative pronouns.

7. Interrogative pronouns.

8. Intensive pronouns.

Determiners vs Pronouns

The main difference between determiners and pronouns is that ‘determiners are modifiers or reference enhancers of nouns’ whereas ’pronouns are a kind of replacement of the noun itself within the text’. Another difference between determiners and pronouns is that determiners have no meaning without the nouns which they modify or refer to, while pronouns, being a replacement of the noun, are absolutely meaningful without nouns in that sentence or phrase.

We would use some examples to understand the difference between determiners and pronouns better. Let’s identify the determiners and pronouns in the following sentences:

1. Men are somehow similar to steel. If they lose their temper, they actually lose their values.

(‘Their’ is a determiner whereas ‘they’ is a pronoun.)

2. She got good marks in mathematics due to her father. He is a mathematics teacher.

(‘She’ (a girl) and ‘he’ (father of the girl) in the given sentences are the replacements of nouns, and hence are pronouns. Whereas, ‘her’ is a possessive determiner.)

Look at the Following Sentences:

1. He had the keys to his cupboard with him.

2. It was raining heavily and they didn’t have umbrellas.

3. Their bikes were fast enough to escape without being caught.

4. Every owner must be completely responsible for its dog.

In the first sentence, ‘his’ is a suitable determiner. The second sentence doesn’t have any determiner. In the third sentence, ‘their’ is a completely meaningful determiner. Whereas, in the fourth sentence, the use of ‘its’ is wrong for showing the ownership of an arbitrary person. Instead, we should use ‘their’.

Let’s try to figure out the types of determiners used in the following sentences

1. Their aunt has four children. The fourth one is a doctor.

‘Their’ is a possessive, ‘four’ is a cardinal number, ‘fourth’ is an ordinal number and ‘a’ is an indefinite article.

Now Look at the Following Examples:

1. That guy is constantly looking at you.

2. That is not fair.

In the first sentence, ‘that’ is used as a determiner. Whereas, in the second sentence, ‘that’ is used as a pronoun.

Consider the Following Sentences

1. I don’t like talking to either people. (determiner)

2. Either of them can do the work. (pronoun)

3. This book is really good. (determiner)

4. This was not expected from her. (pronoun)

5. Each person was feeling sad for him. (determiner)

6. Each of them were terrorists. (pronoun)

In the above examples, ‘either’, ‘this’ and ‘each’ is used both as determiners and pronouns.

Now let us consider the keyword ‘my’.

1. My sister is good at cooking. (determiner)

2. That car is mine. (pronoun)

‘My’ cannot be used as a pronoun in this form. We need to modify it as ‘mine’ to use it as a pronoun:

Did you know?

Conclusion

Hence we learned that a determiner is used to highlight some quality or reference of nouns in a sentence. For this reason, a noun must be present in the sentence if it contains a determiner. Determiners are of generally eight types, i.e., Definite articles, indefinite articles, distributives, demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers, numbers and exclamatives. A pronoun is used at the places where a noun is referred to repeatedly. Hence, pronouns are somewhat replacements of repeated nouns in a text. However, determiners are meaningless without a noun.