Like you, I have encountered many definitions of the term “determiners” and found that hardly any of them seems to capture its sense and function clearly. Perhaps because determiners are too fundamental an element of grammar, the process of defining the term tends to be recursive, needing words that just tend to fold repeatedly upon one another without yielding a clear sense or insight.
For example, take a look at this definition of “determiner” by the
Oxford Dictionaries: “A modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group has, for example
a,
the,
every.” That isn’t a very illuminating definition, is it? And much less so because the sense of “the kind of reference a noun or noun group has” is unspecific and unclear; indeed, I must say that that phrase itself needs to be defined or explained to be useful at all in that definition.
Or consider this decidedly convoluted and longwinded definition of that term in Wikipedia: “A determiner is a word, phrase or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to a definite or indefinite element of a class, to a closer or more distant element, to an element belonging to a specified person or thing, to a particular number or quantity, etc.” Whew! That’s what I’d call a piling up of word upon word to explain something, only to end up sowing confusion instead.
I think the definition of “determiner” by the
Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary & Thesaurus comes closer to being clear and instructive: “A determiner is a word used before a noun to show which particular example of that noun is being referred to. In the phrases ‘my first boyfriend’ and ‘that strange woman’, the words ‘my’ and ‘that’ are determiners.” This is a very admirable attempt to explain something basic in simpler, not tougher terms.
But the clearest, most succinct, and most useful definition of “determiner” I’ve found is this one by the
Macmillan Dictionary: “a word used before a noun for showing which thing or things you are talking about. The words ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘this’, ‘some’, and ‘every’ are determiners.” I think you’ll agree with me that this is a very concise, very instructive definition in clear, simple English—one that truly captures the sense and essence of the term.
With the term “determiner” defined as such, could determiners be considered “half a part of speech and half a part a function” as you’ve come to think based on your readings? I doubt very much. Recall that “parts of speech” is a term in traditional grammar for the eight categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences, namely nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Of course, some old-school grammarians used to consider the articles “the,” “a,” and “an” as a distinct part of speech, but modern grammarians no longer consider them as such, putting them instead in the category of determiners. And from the standpoint of modern grammar, determiners are not a formal word class or part of speech but just functional elements of structure.
SCHEMA FOR THE DETERMINERS IN ENGLISH
Now to your second question: Is it possible to consider ordinal numbers and “some”/“any” as certain kinds of identifiers?
Yes, definitely. Unlike cardinal numbers, in fact, ordinal numbers normally indicate the position of something in a list, such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so forth; as such they function as definite identifiers. In the case of “some” and “any,” they normally function as indefinite quantifiers, but they can also function as indefinite identifiers when used in such expressions as “
Some friend he is, making himself scarce when you most need his help!” (“some” here is used as an adjective meaning “remarkable” in a derogatory way) and “
Any which way will do, so long as they are perfectly legal” (“any” here identifies an indefinite choice from among several choices).
The dynamics of English usage allows for a lot of overlap in the functionalities of identifiers and quantifiers, and these two types of determiners can actually form various combinations that yield even richer modifications of nouns, as in the phrases “
my several little puppies in the kennel” and “s
ome twenty of their first fifty choices turned out to be flukes.”
RELATED READINGS:"Predeterminers are distinct from determiners" (September 19, 2014)
"Determiner Usage" (August 20, 2016)