Grammar 04 - Determiners - Countable and Uncountable Nouns 2

The second category, comprising ENOUGH, LITTLE, MORE, SOME and MUCH, can be used with uncountable nouns only. For instance, in the example above we could say ‘My father gave me SOME MONEY’ or ‘He lost MUCH BLOOD when he hurt himself falling down from the cycle’. Here both ‘money' and 'blood’ are uncountable nouns.

The third category, comprising ALL, SOME, MOST, MORE, ENOUGH, NO and ANY, can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns. For instance, we can say ‘SOME TABLES were broken in the hailstorm’ and ‘Pass me SOME WATER please’ and here SOME is a determiner which can be used by both countable (table) and uncountable (water) nouns.

It takes some practise to use the correct determiners and the trick is to learn about the context of the sentence and identify the nouns and the appropriate determiners to use.

To sum up, determiners are used to express a close relationship, or a quantity, closeness or definiteness. Determiners are also used to demonstrate something or define someone, besides stating differences between nouns. It may be noted that determiners should not be confused with adjectives as there are several differences. For instance, determiners are almost always required in a sentence whereas adjectives are not. Determiners are not gradable whereas adjectives are.

Take the quiz that follows and learn about choosing the appropriate determiners to use with quantifying nouns.