Craig,

"Determinative" isn't really a new category. It's an attempt to clarify
form and function by distinguishing the labels, since many works use the
term "determiner" for both. But even a surface glance at modern
linguistic treatments will show that "determiner" as most books use it
(i.e., what CGEL calls the "determinative") really is a lexical category.

The articles are members of that category. You can think of them as a
subset if you want, although it's a very small subset. The label
"article" hasn't been abandoned, though.

As to your note that 'this' and 'that' act as antecedents, notice that
your examples all use those demonstratives as the sole words in the noun
phrase. In that case, I'm inclined to call them pronouns too (although
CGEL doesn't). But that's a separate issue from their status when they
are determiners.

Compare "this book" with "his book." The two determiners don't, in fact,
move into this slot in the same way. 'His' is literally a pronoun. It
has an antecedent (George, etc.). But what's the antecedent of 'this' in
the phrase "this book"? The whole NP has a referent, but 'this' as a
determiner doesn't have an antecedent that can be distinguished from the
whole phrase, the way it can with 'his.' All 'this' does in "this book"
is pick out 'book' as definite and establish some sort of close spatial
relationship to the speaker. It's no more a pronoun here than 'the' is.

Karl

Karl Hagen
Department of English
Mount St. Mary's College


Craig Hancock wrote:

> Karl,
>    You are giving me some research to do and some possibilities to
> chew on.  My inclination is to see it the way Martha reaffirms it in
> her post, with kinds of words moving into these functional slots. It
> seems to me that you  are mainly adding a new category to that
> (determinative), and that's getting you into saying things like "the
> articles are the prototypical determinatives", which makes me wonder
> whether determinative is a function label or word class label or
> something in between. (Does determinative replace article or would
> articles be a sub-class?)
>     It seems to me that /this /and /that/ act like pronouns with
> antecedents that are generally clear in context.  If I hold up
> George's paper and say "This is the worst piece of nonsense I have
> ever read," the noun phrase antecedent (/George's paper/) will be very
> clear. We have also agreed in talk about /which/ that a pronoun can
> have a clause antecedent, and /this/ and /that /function that way
> often.  "It rained hard all day, and *this *led to flooded streets and
> basements".  Or "You say I said that the President's policy is a
> colossal failure, but *that* is not what I meant."  From there, my
> logic would be that they move into determiner slots (as pronouns) in
> the same way the  possessive pronouns would.  That, at least, is how I
> have seen it up this moment.
>      This is, of course, a common experience for those of us finding
> our way into the heart of the grammar, trying out ever more nuanced
> understandings.
>
> Craig
> Karl Hagen wrote:
>
>> Craig,
>>
>> Most linguistically flavored grammars use "determiner" as the word
>> category and don't distinguish form and function clearly. It might help
>> to distinguish, as CGEL does, "determiner" (function) from from
>> "determinative" (word category). Yes, something can be both a pronoun
>> and a determiner--the genitive pronouns being the obvious case. But we
>> have to be careful about over-generalizing. The case is fuzzier for
>> demonstratives.
>>
>> Bring me George's ball
>> Bring me his ball
>>
>> Here, both "his" and "George's" have the determiner function. Neither is
>> a determinative, though. The first is a genitive NP, and the second is a
>> true pronoun, since it clearly replaces the NP 'George's'
>>
>> Bring me the ball.
>> Bring me that ball.
>>
>> Again, "the" and "that" are both determiners in function. Here, both are
>> determinatives as well. (The articles, of course, are the prototypical
>> determinatives.) Notice, however, that "that" really isn't a pronoun at
>> all. What noun phrase does it take as an antecedent? None. It doesn't
>> indicate deixis or anaphora in its own right, it specifies deixis and/or
>> anaphora for the head noun. In short, the traditional grammatical label
>> of "demonstrative pronoun" is a misnomer.
>>
>> So we could say that the demonstratives be either determinative or
>> pronoun, and only call them pronouns when they head the NP by
>> themselves. Of course CGEL goes on to argue that demonstratives are
>> never actually pronouns, and when they function as heads of an NP, we
>> actually have a "fused head" construction. But I won't get into that
>> argument.
>>
>> Karl Hagen
>> Department of English
>> Mount St. Mary's College
>>
>> Craig Hancock wrote:
>>
>>> Karl,
>>>    I want to say amen to the first part of this post.  Too often, we
>>> get students ready to face the world of stuffy elitists and become
>>> stuffy elitists in the process (or at least indistinguishable from
>>> them.)  I think it helps for the student to know that the sentence
>>> might be thought of as "incorrect" or "nonstandard" (as subordinate
>>> clause), but could very well be effective in its rhetorical context.
>>> Even with the most basic of students, effectiveness is worth talking
>>> about and flexibility is worth encouraging.  If we give them
>>> opportunities to write for each other, we can even ask about their own
>>> evolving standards.
>>>     Words, as I see it,  can be both pronouns and determiners.  In
>>> /get me that ball,/ "that" is a demonstrative pronoun in a determiner
>>> role.  In /bring me his ball,/ I would describe /his/ as a possessive
>>> pronoun acting as determiner.  /A /and /the/ are articles that act as
>>> determiners with meanings often recoverable in context..  And so on.
>>>  My sense of it is that a word can't be a determiner outside of actual
>>> use.  Determiners help us restrict the range of meanings of the head
>>> noun (not just /car/, but /a car,/ /the car/, /this car/, /his car/,
>>> /the first car,/ /my brother's car,/ /any car/, and so on.)  In /which
>>> car do you want/, the /which/ acts rhetorically to focus attention on
>>> the information sought (the determiner role.)  In other words, I am
>>> asking you to narrow down the range of meaning of "car" so that I can
>>> identify the entity wanted.  /Which/, in the determiner slot, lets me
>>> focus my information request.
>>>     I know they can't be thought of as fully separate categories, but
>>> we are confusing word class (pronoun) with particular (determiner)
>>> function.
>>>     After following this fine and interesting talk, I think I would
>>> side with you, that "which" is a relative pronoun, but with the added
>>> sense that it can sometimes act like a demonstrative pronoun in having
>>> whole clauses as its antecedent and therefore can have to feel of
>>> heading an independent clause.
>>>    Just because pronouns can be subjects of independent clauses
>>> doesn't mean that their meaning isn't highly dependent on context.  A
>>> sentence is not a complete thought in any effective writing, but a
>>> move in a series of related moves. These fragments are starting to
>>> look to me like very reasonable options.
>>>
>>> Craig
>>>
>>
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