Determiners may be used as heads, as in the following examples: Some arrived this morning I have never seen many He gave us two Like third person pronouns, these force us to refer back in the context to see what is being referred to. Some arrived this morning makes us ask ‘Some what?’, just as He arrived this morning makes us ask ‘Who did?’. But there is a difference. He stands in place of a whole noun phrase (e.g. the minister), while some is part of a noun phrase doing duty for the whole (e.g. some applications). Here are some more examples: I have eaten both (e.g. both pieces of toast) They have never seen any (e.g. any camels) Many were torn (e.g. many of the envelopes) These need washing (e.g. these spoons) The personal determiners (my, his, her, its, etc.— see p. 18 and column c in Figure 11, p. 29) have special forms for the purpose of acting as head. We do not say * Your is a hard worker, but Yours is a hard worker. The list of appropriate forms appears in column d of Figure 11. Some examples in context are: I have never seen theirs (e.g. their house, or their houses) He gave us two of hers (e.g. her gramophone records) Did you find mine? (e.g. my glove, or my gloves) Most determiners occurring as heads are backreferring. The examples given above amply illustrate this point. However, they are not all so. This is especially the case with this, that, these, and those. For instance, the sentence Have you seen these before? could be spoken while the speaker is pointing to some newly built houses. He is then not referring ‘back’ to something mentioned, but referring ‘out’ to something outside the text. This is rather different from the back-referring use of ‘this’ in He sent us a lot of information; this was mostly statistical. Here this refers back to information. The technical name for back reference is anaphora, and expressions in a text which refer back are said to be anaphoric. Not all anaphoric expressions are nouns and pronouns; for instance in This pub is nicer, it is a comparative adjective nicer that prompts the question ‘than what?’ (Exercise 27 is on p. 35.) Summary The types of noun phrase that have been dis cussed in this chapter are as follows: 1 The postman noun phrase with common noun head 2 William noun phrase with proper noun head 3 He noun phrase with personal pronoun head 4 Somebody noun phrase with indefinite pronoun head 5 The green one noun phrase with noun substitute head
6 Some noun phrase with determiner head