Since mutability is the nature of language so it is quite necessary that grammar which is the study of language must be mutable with the time, hence there are many changes in the grammar over the years and the traditional grammar to the great extend has been replaced by the modern grammar.

According to Rodney Huddleston in English Grammar: an outline pronoun is not a part of speech in itself rather it is the part of noun and its possessive case is included into another part of speech and that is determiner.

Definition

Determiners are little functional words that are used in a sentence for various purposes. their functions and kinds are defined as follows.

Determiner include three things

1. Articles (the, an, a)
2. Possessive case of pronoun (his, her, its, my, mine, our, your, their)
3. Demonstratives (this, that, those, these)

Articles and possessive case of pronoun are already discussed in previous chapters of Articles and Pronoun. Now here it is important to discuss demonstratives.

Demonstratives are also called demonstrative pronouns. Since pronoun replaces noun and similarly demonstratives replace nouns, like;

• Pen is mine.
  This / that is mine.
• Pens are mine.
  These / those are mine

You have seen that in above examples the word [pen] has been replaced by demonstratives. Demonstratives indicates TWO things;

1. Number of things
2. Distance

Demonstrative [this] indicates nearness and singularity of thing. Similarly [that] stands for singular thing at a distance. Same is the case with [these] and [those].

Determiners are very common in language.

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