Predeterminers

The ‘pre’ in most words means ‘before’, so a ‘pre’ + ‘determiner’ means something that comes before a determiner. One type of predeterminer is an intensifier that tells you some extra information about the noun that comes after the determiner. The words ‘indeed’, ‘rather’, and ‘not really’ are examples of intensifiers. Here’s an example:

The soothsayer was indeed a fake.

The predeterminer ‘indeed’ comes before the determiner ‘a’, which comes before the noun ‘fake’. In this sentence, the linking verb ‘was’ connects the subject of the sentence ‘the soothsayer’ with the subject complement ‘fake’.

Multipliers and fractional expressions are also predeterminers that tell the reader some more information about the noun:

This toaster is twice the cost of the one in the other shop.

‘Twice’ is the multiplicative predeterminer and ‘the’ is the determiner. You can also have fractional predeterminers:

In the last run I did, I shaved one-fourth of an hour off my previous best time.

In this sentence, the fractional predeterminer is ‘one-fourth of’ and the determiner is ‘an’.

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