Indefinite pronouns or determiners

Question

Hi: I have some confusion between Quantifying determiners and Indefinite pronouns:

Are the words "some", "each", "a few, and "neither" in the following sentences functioning as pronouns or determiners?

- Some of them disagree

- Each of the boys has to pay the fine.

- A few among them are poor

- Neither of them has said anything so far

BillJ · Accepted Answer

It's not clear whether you're asking about their word category (part of speech) or their function, e.g. determiner, modifier etc. 'Pronoun' is a word category (part of speech), while 'determiner' is a function.

All your examples belong to the category (part of speech) determinative, and their function is fused determiner-head in noun phrase structure.

"Some" is an existential determinative.

"Each" is a distributive determinative.

"A few" is a complex degree determinative (paucal).

"Neither" is a disjunctive determinative.

The term 'fused determiner-head' is used to indicate that a determinative is functioning simultaneously as determiner and head of the noun phrase. In your example "some of them disagree", "some" is followed by the partitive PP complement "of them". The noun phrase "some of them" is partitive in the sense that it denotes a subset of some larger set. "Them" refers to a set of x, and "some of them" then means "some members of set x", (where x would typically mean people).

Indefinite pronouns or determiners

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