Determiners often form highly grammaticalized paradigms, esp. a paradigm of articles. In such a case, one member of the paradigm is often zero. For instance, Turkish has an indefinite article which contrasts with absence of an article.

A semantic component of a nominal lexeme – prominently, a proper noun – may have the function of a determiner. The argument presupposes the stipulation that if a nominal is determined by a determiner, the resulting construction is a noun phrase. Now in a certain language, common nouns and proper nouns may be two different distribution classes, as a common noun has the distribution of a nominal, while a proper noun has the distribution of a noun phrase. In the English clausal frame __ came in, the syntagmatic slot may be occupied by an NP like the milkman or by a proper noun like Alfred. One may then conclude that the proper noun includes, in its meaning, a feature otherwise contributed by a determiner.