An Analysis on the Differences Between Adjectives and Determiners-文档资料

An Analysis on the Differences Between

Adjectives and Determiners

【】An adjective is a word whose main syntactic role

is to modify a noun or pronoun. A determiner is a noun

modifier that expresses the reference of a noun phrase in

the context. Thus， this research mainly analyzes the

differences between adjectives and determiners from three

aspects which are morphology， syntax and noun selection.

It attempts to illustrate that the main differences based

on determiners can not be subsumed within adjectives.

1. Introduction

In grammar， an adjective is a word whose main syntactic

role is to modify a noun or pronoun， giving more

information about the noun or pronoun’s referent.

Adjectives belong to lexical categories because the words

belonging to these categories have descriptive content

（Radford， 1997）. In English， adjectives are a set of

open-class items. The number of this category is infinite

and new adjectives can be created continually. A determiner

is a noun modifier that expresses the reference of a noun

phrase in the context， including quantity， rather than attributes expressed by adjectives. Determiners belong to

functional categories. Function words serve primarily to

carry information about the grammatical properties of

expressions within the sentence. Most of the determiners

belong to the closed-class. The number is limited and the

members exclude each other.

Determiners are positioned in front of nouns and

adjectives can similarly be positioned prenominally. But

we can not subsume determiners within the category of

adjectives since there are many differences between

determiners and adjectives. Determiners do not have the

properties adjectives should have. This paper is going to

illustrate how determiners are different from adjectives

and thus why determiners can not be subsumed within the

category of adjectives. Their differences lie in

morphology， syntax and their selection of the nouns or noun

phrases they modify.

2. Morphological Differences

Adjectives and determiners have distinct

morphological properties. Adjectives have comparative and

superlative forms while determiners do not have these two

forms except many， much， little and few. For example， adjectives generally have a comparative form in ?Cer （if

they are not more than two syllables in length）， whereas

determiners do not. Adjectives as quicker， nicer and

happier are well-formed and they form new members in the

adjective class. However， determiners with suffixes ?Cer，

such as thiser， everier do not exist. Moreover，

adjectives generally have adverbial counterparts ending

in ?Cly， such as quickly， nicely， happily. The negative

prefixes un+ and in+ can be attached to adjectives to form

a corresponding negative adjective （such as

happy/unhappy） whereas determiners do not have these

properties.

3. Syntactic Differences

The morphological distinctions are not the only

differences between determiners and adjectives. These

differences are not sufficient to categorize determiners

out of adjectives. Syntactically， Determiners and

adjectives are distinct in a variety of ways.

Firstly， adjectives and other modifiers of noun

phrases can be omitted without destroying the structural

integrity but determiners can not be omitted freely. This

is because determiners have essential relation， i.e. structural relation with the noun phrases they modify and

are the necessary modifiers of the noun phrases. Other

modifiers， including adjectives， only have lexical

meaning connections with nouns they modify. Descriptions

on lexical meaning do not influence the basic structure of

the sentence. Descriptions of thing’s types， properties

or states are optional and dispensable. Determiners are

necessary in order to give grammatical meaning to a

singular noun but separate adjectives can not. For in

stance， a/the/another chair are grammatical but

comfortable chair can not stand on its own as a complete

noun expression.

The second syntactic distinction between determiners

and adjectives lies in their distribution. One example is

that， adjectives can be recursively stacked in front of

the noun they modify， so we can go on putting more and more

adjectives in front of a given noun， such as tall dark

handsome men； whereas determiners can not be stacked in

this way. Generally， there is only determiners of a given

type premodifying a noun so the car is grammatical but a

that car is ungrammatical.

What’s more， determiners can be coordinated （i.e.