For you non-English folks, a "determiner" is really just a word that quantifies or identifies a noun. Think of the articles the and a. But a determiner can be possessive (like my or their) or something that alludes to quantity (like some or few), among other words.
It appears the way people write today is killing off the determiner though. More specifically, we're killing off the.
Over at the Language Log, a bit of research has shown a precipitous decline over the last century, with some studies showing the use of the dropping by 8% over the last 25 years, or, as they state, a 28% drop compounded over a century.
The Language Log went one step further though. They examined the use of the in two versions of the Bible's Song of Solomon, published roughly 400-years apart: The King James Bible in 1611 and the Message Bible published between 1993 and 2002.
In the King James translation, the is used as 6.57% of all words. The Message Bible? 4.06%. Same Song of Solomon passage, but two very different interpretations from centuries apart.
Not counting the italicized ones, I used the 13 times just now. I'm so King James-y.
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