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Is the in eg. The Gambia, The Guardian, The ICJ, The United States,... considered a determiner or is it a part of the proper noun?

KillingTime
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serendipity
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  • It depends. The first country's name is "The Gambia" or more properly "Republic of The Gambia", the other country's name is "United States (of America)". That newsaper is "The Guardian" and the court is "International Court of Justice". – Weather Vane Mar 13 '24 at 20:26
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    Does this answer your question? significance of "The" before country name Or (better) Using the definite article before a country-/state-name? The extent of the proper noun is determined by choice rather than by using infallible deductive reasoning. The only way to be sure is to check usage. Capitalisation may help decide. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 13 '24 at 22:54
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    I have a hard time deciding how this answer (that used to claim that the present question is a duplicate) shows anything about the word "the" being considered a determiner or not, and that is the question (merely a statement as to when you use "the"). There is for instance the entry "the proletariat" in the OLD, (tends to show that in certain terms "the" is not be considered a determiner. In my opinion this grammatical question remains open. – LPH Mar 14 '24 at 13:12
  • "considered a determiner" by whom and in what context? Are you asking about capitalization, collocation, constructing a parse tree... It could possibly be both considered a determiner and be part of the proper noun (United States of America is a proper noun, but you'd be hard put to argue that "of" isn't a preposition there, at least vestigially - it's common to form variations of the name in which "of" is definitely a preposition). – Stuart F Mar 14 '24 at 14:43
  • @StuartF The fact that "the proletariat" (all such terms) is called a noun in OLD seems to show that "the" is not to be analysed; otherwise the proper nomenclature should be "noun phrase". I can't find any grammatical text making that explicitly clear and so I can't be certain that my inference is an accepted point of view rather than the consequence of a mere incidental deduction resulting from a dictionary practice that was not meant to imply as much. (A definite answer is needed, "yes", "no", or "unresolved", and this last possibility would indicate that further research is not vain.) – LPH Mar 14 '24 at 15:25
  • In OLD, "The United States (of America)" is considered to be a noun. – LPH Mar 14 '24 at 15:28

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