ABSTRACT
Determiners belong to the class of words that precede nouns to express a narrow and specific type of conceptual meaning. Determiner types include definite and indefinite articles, demonstratives, possessives, quantifies, interrogatives, and the covert determiner ⊘. The meanings of determiners are limited narrowly to identifiability/specificity, degree of FOCUS, possession and possession-like concepts (e.g., preference, affiliation), gender (for third-person singular possessive determiners only), sequence and order, number and quantity, and irrelevance of any of the previously mentioned concepts. Learners of English often mention that the uses and meanings of the (definite article) and a (indefinite article) are among the most challenging aspects of English grammar. A meaning-based approach to grammar in discourse helps ameliorate these challenges as well as elucidates how such tiny words like the, some, any, this, and that can evoke the stance of a speaker vis-à-vis objects, entities, ideologies, and so forth.
