Pre-determiners
Pre-determiners are words placed before English determiners in a sentence. They modify the determiner.
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Pre-determiners come before an article or other determiner and are used to give even more information about the noun that comes after.
To understand pre-determiners, you must first understand English determiners.
English determiners are words used to identify nouns. They tell us how much, how many, whose, and which one.
Examples:
- Have you seen my
dog?
- Can I borrow that
dress?
- I want to ride the
horse.
- Please hand
me the other
pencil.
- She won the first
race.
- Colorado's
mountains are beautiful!
- I do not have enough
paper.
- She is their third daughter.
Pre-determiners come before determiners. Pre-determiners most commonly come before definite and indefinite articles a, an, or the.
Pre-determiners can be classified into four types as shown in the chart below.
| Classification | Examples |
| multipliers | twice five times ten times |
| fractions | half one-third one-eighth |
| intensifiers | rather such quite what |
| other | all both |
Multipliers
Multipliers include words and phrases such as:twice, three times, five times, ten times
This type of pre-determiner is used to express more than the specified amount.
Examples:
- She makes twice
my annual salary.
- His hamburger
is twice the size of mine.
- I check my messages three times
every day.
- Mom calls me approximately five times
a week.
- Our group raised ten times the amount needed for the trip.
Fractions
Fractions include words such as:one-third, half, three-fourths
This type of pre-determiner is used to express a fraction of an amount.
Examples:
- Her bus will arrive in half
an hour.
- I ate one-third
Sandy's cookies.
- She uses three-fourths her monthly salary for rent and bills.
Intensifiers
Intensifiers include pre-determiners such as:such, what, rather, quite
This type of pre-determiner expresses surprise, disappointment, pleasure, or other emotions.
Examples:
- This turned out to be such
a beautiful day! (I am very pleased by the
day.)
- You are such
a disappointment. (I am disappointed and surprised by what
you did.)
- It was quite
a nice surprise! (I was very surprised and happy.)
- We had quite
an experience when we were on vacation. (The experience
was surprising and exciting.)
- Your mother is rather
a nice woman. (I am pleased by your mother.)
- It is rather
a small ring. (I am slightly disappointed by the size
of
the ring.
- What
an interesting idea! (I am surprised by your idea.)
- What a large cat! (I am surprised by the size of the cat.)
Other pre-determiners
There are a few pre-determiners that do not fall into the above categories. They include words such as:all and both
These two pre-determiners are used to express an entire amount.
Examples:
- Both
of John's bike tires are flat.
- He broke both
his arms in the accident.
- All
her friends came to her graduation.
- Did you read all those books?
These were the uses of Pre-determiners. Now that you know them, it is time to practice! Get our ESL Books.
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