User talk:P Aculeius

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Again, welcome! -- Cirt (talk) 02:37, 7 February 2012 (UTC)



re: Reversion
I could have just restored the two senses, but you expressed concern over the edit not being under your account, so I reverted it. That way, what you added back is unambiguously under your account. I apologize if it came across as rude. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:18, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, it was nice of you to explain it here, then. I've felt a little besieged on Wiktionary lately, so maybe I'm just a bit paranoid.  Thank you.  P Aculeius (talk) 16:21, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Don’t worry; everybody feels like that all the time. Probably because we have a monolithic community, unlike Wikipedia. — Ungoliant (falai) 17:09, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Determiners
Determiners are an important class of modifiers distinct from adjectives. I resisted the introduction into Wiktionary of the term as a PoS header, c. 2009, because few dictionaries used it as a PoS label. That some good ones (eg, Longman's DCE) did convinced me to go along with the addition of the PoS. Now several dictionaries use it. The criteria for differentiating determiners from other modifiers in noun phrases are a little complicated, but are well presented in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), a fabulous work. BTW, what we call "determiners", they call "determinatives".

One feature that distinguishes determiners from adjectives is where they fit in the sequence of modifiers. Determiners must precede typical adjectives:
 * these red cars
 * *red these cars.

HTH. DCDuring TALK 04:07, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Finished separating adjective and pronoun senses before this message arrived. It still sounds like non-pronoun determiners are at best a class of adjectives, rather than being distinct from them.  Worse, the notion of lumping them in with pronouns makes it difficult to tell what you're looking at when you're trying to follow traditional rules of defining the parts of speech according to function.  You then have a class of words that appear to be pronouns but are listed as something else, and a class of adjectives with the same problem, and they're all mixed in together, possibly with some adverbs thrown in, until you just have a vague muddle of description that's no longer concerned with what's being described.  It sounds more like an anti-grammar to me.  I suspect someone will revert my changes within an hour or two.  P Aculeius (talk) 04:25, 28 January 2016 (UTC)