Determiner phrase
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In linguistics, a determiner phrase is a syntactic category, a phrase headed by a determiner. In English, determiner phrases occur at the beginning of a noun phrase and provide some sort of reference:
Examples, with determiner phrases in italics:
- a little dog, the little dogs (indefinite or definite article)
- this little dog, those little dogs (demonstrative)
- my little dogs, their little dog (determinative possessive pronoun)
- Sheila's little dog, the Queen of England's little dog (noun phrase + 's)
- every little dog, each little dog, some little dog, either dog, no dog (quantifying)
Most determiner phrases consist of a single determiner (such as a and my in the example above), but some consist of several words (Sheila's, the Queen of England's).