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What is meant by determiners?

Determiners are used in front of nouns to indicate whether you are referring to something specific or something of a particular type.

Determiners are different to pronouns in that a determiner is always followed by a noun. Therefore personal pronouns ( you he , etc.) and possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his, etc.) cannot be determiners.

The definite and indefinite articles a/an/the are all determiners.

You use a specific determiner when people know exactly which thing(s) or person/people you are talking about.

The specific determiners are:

the definite article : the
demonstratives : this, that, these, those
possessives : my, your, his, her, its, our, their

For example:-

"The dog barked at the boy."
"These apples are rotten."
"Their bus was late."



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