Possessive adjective

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What are traditionally and popularly called possessive adjectives — in linguistic analyses possessive pronouns, possessive determiners or genitive pronouns — are a part of speech that prototypically modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something (but see below). Depending on the theory the grammar subscribes to, English "possessive adjectives" are determiners or pronouns: possessive determiners,[1] possessive pronouns,[2] dependent genitive pronouns,[3] weak possessive pronouns,[4] and so forth. They are not adjectives, because they can be substituted for and cannot co-occur with another determiner such as an article or a demonstrative:

  • the black book
  • that black book
  • your black book
  • *the your black book
  • *that your black book
  • *your the black book
  • *your that black book

Contents

English possessive adjectives

There are seven possessive pronouns in modern English: my, your, his, her, its, our, and their. (The suffix -'s works similarly, but it is a clitic attached to the preceding determiner phrase.) All of them indicate definiteness, like the definite article the. Since in English they cannot co-occur with an article, phrases like "a book of mine" or "one of my books" must be used instead of incorrect "*a my book." Their strong forms[5] — used independently (Mine is broken; can I use yours?) — are mine, yours, his, hers, ours and theirs (prenominal its has no predicative equivalent).

However, in other languages the definiteness needs to be added separately. In Norwegian the phrase "my book" would be "boka mi"[6], where "boka" is the definite form of the feminine noun "bok" (book), and "mi" (my) is the possessive pronoun following feminine singular nouns.

Some languages have no such distinctive pronouns, and express possession by declining personal pronouns in the genitive or possessive case, or by using possessive suffixes. In Japanese, for example, boku no (a word for I with genitive particle), is used for "my" or "mine".

Possessive pronouns can avoid repetitions in a sentence by replacing a determiner phrase: they allow us to say "the girl took off her glasses" instead of "the girl took off the girl's glasses".

Forms

Possessive adjectives (or possessive determiners) commonly have similar forms to personal pronouns. In addition, they have corresponding possessive pronouns, which are also phonetically similar. The following chart shows the English, German, and French personal pronouns, possessive adjectives, and possessive pronouns (masculine nominative singular only).

Possessor English German French
Pers.
pron.
(obj)		 Poss.
adj.		 Poss.
pron.		 Pers.
pron.
(gen)		 Poss.
adj.		 Poss.
pron.		 Pers.
pron.
(dat)		 Poss.
adj.		 Poss.
pron.
Singular 1st me my mine meiner mein meiner me mon le mien
2nd you your yours deiner dein deiner te ton le tien
3rd Masculine him his his seiner sein seiner lui son le sien
Feminine her her hers ihrer ihr ihrer
Neuter it its (its) seiner sein seiner  
Plural 1st us our ours unser unser unserer nous notre le nôtre
2nd you your yours euer euer eurer vous votre le vôtre
3rd them their theirs ihrer ihr ihrer leur leur le leur

Semantics

For pronouns as elsewhere, the genitive does not always attribute possession. Consider the following examples:

  • my child and my mother

Although one might argue for ownership of a child, it's much harder to argue for the ownership of a mother. The relation here is not ownership but kinship.

  • my dream

This relation is less clear: one does not quite own their dreams.

  • his train (as in "If Bob doesn't get to the station in 10 minutes he's going to miss his train")

Bob normally does not own the train.

  • my CD (as in "The kids are enjoying my CD")

This noun phrase could refer to the CD that I own, the one with music that I recorded, the one that I bought for the kids, or some other relation identifiable in the context.

Common misspelling

It is worth remembering that no possessive determiner of English has an apostrophe, except for one's . Although a number of them, like its, are homophonous with pronoun-auxiliary contractions:

pronoun - genitive forms whose? my your his her its our their
'be' verb (contracted forms) who's? I'm you're he's she's it's we're they're

The pronoun its is very commonly misspelled; not only is there the homophone it's (a form of either "it is" or "it has"), but -'s is a genitive clitic.

Notes

  1. ^ Biber et al. (1999), pp. 270–72
  2. ^ Jesperson (1949), pp. 399–405.
  3. ^ Payne and Huddleston (2002), p.426.
  4. ^ Quirk et al. (1985), pp. 361–62.
  5. ^ Quirk et al. call them strong possessive pronouns (1985, pp. 361–62). Other terms are possessive pronouns (Jesperson 1949, pp. 399–405; Biber et al. 1999, pp. 340–42) and independent genitive pronouns (Payne and Huddleston 2002, p.426).
  6. ^ In Norwegian bokmål written form, the phrase could alternatively be written as "min bok" due to bokmål's Danish heritage.

References

  • Biber, Douglas, et al. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken English. Harlow, Essex: Longman. ISBN 0-582-23725-4.
  • Jespersen, Otto. (1949) A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part 2 (Syntax, vol. 1). Copenhagen: Munksgaard; London: George Allen and Unwin.
  • Payne, John, and Rodney Huddleston. (2002) "Nouns and Noun Phrases." Chap. 5 of Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
  • Quirk, Randolph, et al. (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow, Essex: Longman. ISBN 0-582-51734-0.
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