To one member of the Linglex advisory committee we owe a special debt—Philip Scholfield, who, when the book was heing assembled for publication, went through it with a fine-tooth comb in his capacity as editor for style and presentation. This reference to 'style and presentation* does no( adequately represent Philip's contribution, which led to much redrafting in the interests of consistency of style, terminology! layout, and level of detail. | 270 NOUNS PRONOUNS AND THE SIMPLE NOUN PHRASE determiners this these that those . However these sets are used to differing extents in the different registers. CORPUS FINDINGS 2 The definite article is far more frequent than other definite determiners. There are large differences among registers in the use of all definite determiners. Possessive determiners are far less frequent than the definite article. Possessive determiners are notably common in fiction. Conversation and news rely on possessive determiners to a greater extent than academic prose. Demonstrative determiners are far less frequent than the definite article. Demonstrative determiners are most frequent in academic prose. However demonstrative determiners are proportionally most common in conversation comprising c. 15 of all definite determiners Figure Distribution of definite determiners across registers possessive determines B demonstrative determiner I definite article DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS The definite article is a more neutral determiner than the possessive forms in that it marks an entity as known without specifying how it is related to other entities. Therefore it has a wider distribution in all the registers than the possessive determiners. Possessive determiners are particularly associated with human beings and they characteristically serve to identify entities by their relationships to human beings. Hence they are very common in fiction which is overwhelmingly concerned with humans and their relationships. For the same reason possessive determiners are also relatively common in conversation in spite of the low frequency of nouns in that register . They are also common in news where human-centred topics are abundant. The density of possessive determiners is low in academic prose which deals with entities of all kinds and focuses less commonly on human beings. Conversation has a proportionally higher use of demonstrative determiners in relation to the definite article .
