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What are traditionally and popularly, if mistakenly, 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. In English, they are not considered 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

(Here and in the discussion that follows, an asterisk indicates unacceptability.)

In this article, they are termed "weak possessive pronouns".

Contents 1 English weak possessive pronouns (possessive adjectives) 2 Forms 3 Weak possessive pronouns in other languages 4 Semantics 5 The apostrophe in possessives 6 Notes 7 References

[edit] English weak possessive pronouns (possessive adjectives)

There are seven weak 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.) These are traditionally known as "possessive adjectives". 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 unacceptable "*a my book." Their strong forms^[5] — used independently (Mine is broken; can I use yours?) — are mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours and theirs. These are traditionally known as "possessive pronouns".

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 (or in other analyses, noun phrase): they allow us to say "the girl took off her glasses" instead of "the girl took off the girl's glasses".

[edit] Forms

Weak possessive pronouns commonly have similar forms to personal pronoun used for other cases. In addition, they have corresponding strong forms, which are also phonetically similar. The following chart shows the English, German,^[7] and French personal pronouns, possessive adjectives, and possessive pronouns (masculine nominative singular only).

Possessor			English			German			French
			Pers. pron. (obj)	Weak poss. pron.	Strong poss. pron.	Pers. pron. (gen)	Weak poss. pron.	Strong poss. pron.	Pers. pron. (dat)	Weak poss. pron.	Strong 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	masc.	him	his	his	seiner	sein	seiner	lui	son	le sien
		fem.	her	her	hers	ihrer	ihr	ihrer
		neut.	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

[edit] Weak possessive pronouns in other languages

In most Romance languages (like French and Italian) the gender of the weak possessive pronoun agrees with the thing(s) owned, not with the owner. French, for example, uses son for masculine nouns and also for feminine noun phrases starting with a vowel, sa elsewhere; compare Il a perdu son chapeau (He lost his hat) with Elle a perdu son chapeau (She lost her hat). In this respect the weak possessive pronouns in these languages resemble ordinary adjectives.

In Italian, constructions such as "il tuo libro nero" ("the your black book" rendered in English as "your black book") and "quel tuo libro nero" ("that your black book" rendered in English as "that black book of yours") are grammatically correct. In Italian, the weak possessive pronouns behave in almost every respect like ordinary adjectives and are usually described as possessive adjectives.

Some Germanic languages, like English and Dutch, use different pronouns depending on the owner. English has the (uninflected) words his and her; Dutch uses the (uninflected) zijn and haar.

Other Germanic languages, such as German and several Dutch dialects as Limburgish and Brabantian, have features of both systems. German has sein (with inflected forms like seine) for masculine and ihr (with inflected forms like ihre) for feminine possessors; in German, the "hat" sentences above would be Er hat seinen Hut verloren and Sie hat ihren Hut verloren respectively. Brabantian inflects zijn (his) and haar (her) according to the grammatical gender and number of the thing(s) owned.

[edit] 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 a CD that I own, one with music that I recorded, one that I bought for the kids, or one with some other relation to me that would be identifiable in the context.

[edit] The apostrophe in possessives

• The possessive forms in English of all nouns, names and noun phrases have an apostrophe:

Johanna's friends, my father's books, both my parents' concerns, a Member of Parliament's responsibilities

• Most possessive pronouns with a final /s/ or /z/ sound, including phrases that function as possessives, also have an apostrophe:

one's, anyone's, someone's

everybody's, nobody's

another's, the other's (the others', where other is plural), each other's

somebody else's

whoever's

• Possessive pronouns without a final /s/ or /z/ sound have no apostrophe:

your friends, their concerns

• Seven common possessive forms have no apostrophe, even though they have a final /s/ or /z/ sound:

his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs, whose

• Some possessive forms lacking an apostrophe are fully or nearly homophonous with quite distinct words, and especially with certain contractions:

possessive forms	whose	your	[his]	its	their	theirs
"be" or "have" contracted forms, etc.	who's	you're	[he's]	it's	they're; there	there's

It is commonly held that the possessive its is very commonly misspelled, by confusion with the homophone it's (a contraction of either it is or it has). However the original usage was it's, and it derives from it+'is. ^[8] The drop of the apostrophe is by convention and not grammatical rationale. its is grammatically not a pronoun but a possessive noun phrase as a [double possessive] cannot be formed with it. (One cannot say 'The house of its'.) Strictly analysed it has no possessive form and a possessive enclitic is applied for that purpose.

[edit] 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.
7. ^ See [http://www.canoo.net/services/OnlineGrammar/InflectionRules/FRegeln-P/Pron-Poss1.html?MenuId=Word423#Anchor-Formen-11481 canoonet: Possessivpronomen und Possessivartikel]
8. ^ http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=its&searchmode=none

[edit] 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.