Possessive determiner
Possessive determiners are
Examples in
In many languages, possessive determiners are subject to agreement with the noun they modify, as in the French mon, ma, mes, respectively the masculine singular, feminine singular and plural forms corresponding to the English my.
Comparison with determiners
Possessive determiners, as used in English and some other languages, imply the
Nomenclature
While some classify the words my, your, etc. as possessive adjectives,[2] the differences noted above make others not consider them adjectives, at least not in English, and prefer possessive determiners. In some other languages, the equivalent parts of speech behave more like true adjectives, however.
The words my, your, etc. are sometimes classified, along with mine, yours etc., as
Some authors who classify both sets of words as "possessive pronouns" or "genitive pronouns" apply the terms dependent/independent[7] or weak/strong[8] to refer, respectively, to my, your, etc. and mine, yours, etc. For example, under that scheme, my is termed a dependent possessive pronoun and mine an independent possessive pronoun.
In linguistic terminology, possessive forms are also referred to as ktetic forms since
In English
The basic
Other possessive determiners (although they may not always be classed as such though they play the same role in syntax) are the words and phrases formed by attaching the clitic -'s (or sometimes just an apostrophe after -s) to other pronouns, to nouns and to noun phrases (sometimes called determiner phrases). Examples include Jane's, heaven's, the boy's, Jesus', the soldiers', those men's, the king of England's, one's, somebody's.
For more details of the formation and use of possessives in English, see English possessive. For more details about the use of determiners generally, see English determiners.
Other languages
Though in English the possessive determiners indicate definiteness, in other languages the definiteness needs to be added separately for grammatical correctness.
In Norwegian the phrase "my book" would be boka mi,[11] where boka is the definite form of the feminine noun bok (book), and mi (my) is the possessive pronoun following feminine singular nouns.
In some Romance languages such as French and Italian, the gender of the possessive determiners agrees with the thing(s) owned, not with the owner. French, for example, in the singular, 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 that respect, the possessive determiners in these languages resemble ordinary adjectives. French also correlates possessive determiners to both the plurality of the possessor and possessee, as in notre voiture (our car) and nos voitures (our cars). In Modern Spanish, however, not all possessive determiners change to reflect the gender of the possessee, as is the case for mi, tu, and su, e.g. mi hijo y mi hija ("my son and my daughter"). In the first and second person plural forms--nuestra/nuestro and vuestra/vuestro—possessive determiners do mark gender inflection in the singular, e.g., nuestra nuera y nuestro yerno ("our daughter-in-law and our son-in-law"). All possessive determiners mark the plurality of the possessee, e.g. Mi esposa tiene mis gafas ("My wife has my glasses"). Spanish possessive pronouns agree with the gender and plurality of the possessee, e.g. Esas niñas son nuestras. Ese bolígrafo es nuestro. ("Those girls are ours. That pen is ours.").
In Italian, constructions such as il tuo libro nero ("the your book black ", rendered in English as "your black book") and quel tuo libro nero ("that your book black", rendered in English as "that black book of yours") are grammatically correct. In Italian, possessive determiners behave in almost every respect like adjectives.
Some
Some languages have no distinctive possessive determiners and express
Some languages use the same word for both the possessive determiner and the matching possessive pronoun. For example, in
On the other hand, some
Semantics
For possessive determiners as elsewhere, the genitive does not always indicate strict possession, but rather a general sense of belonging or close identification with. Consider the following examples involving relational nouns:
- my mother or my people
- Here, a person does not own his or her mother, but rather has a close relationship with her. The same applies to my people, which means people I am closely associated with or people I identify with.
- his train (as in "If Bob doesn't get to the station in ten minutes he's going to miss his train")
- Here, Bob most likely does not own the train and instead his train means the train Bob plans to travel on.
- my CD (as in "The kids are enjoying my CD")
- my CD could refer to a CD that I own, a CD owned by someone else but with music that I recorded as an artist, a CD that I have just given to someone here as a gift, or one with some other relation to me that would be identifiable in the context.
Forms
Possessive determiners commonly have similar forms to
Possessor | English | German | French | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pers. pron. ( obj ) |
Poss. det. |
Poss. pron. |
Pers. pron. (acc) |
Poss. det. |
Poss. pron. |
Pers. pron. (dat) |
Poss. det. |
Poss. pron. | |||
Singular | 1st | me | my | mine | mich | mein, meine, meiner, meines, meinem, meinen | meiner, meine, mein(e)s, meinen, meinem | me | mon, ma, mes | le mien, la mienne, les miens, les miennes | |
2nd | dich | dein, deine, deiner, deines, deinem, deinen | deiner, deine, dein(e)s, deinen, deinem | te | ton, ta, tes | le tien, la tienne, les tiens, les tiennes | |||||
3rd | masc. | him | his | his | ihn | sein, seine, seiner, seines, seinem, seinen | seiner, seine, sein(e)s, seinen, seinem | lui | son, sa, ses | le sien, la sienne, les siens, les siennes | |
fem. | her | her | hers | sie | ihr, ihre, ihrer, ihres, ihrem, ihren | ihrer, ihre, ihr(e)s, ihren, ihrem | |||||
neut. | it | its | (its) | es | sein, seine, seiner, seines, seinem, seinen | seiner, seine, sein(e)s, seinen, seinem | |||||
Plural | 1st | us | our | ours | uns | unser, unsere, unserer, unseres, unserem, unseren | unserer, unsere, unser(e)s, unseren, unserem | nous | notre, nos | le nôtre, la nôtre, les nôtres | |
2nd | euch | euer, euere, euerer, eueres, euerem, eueren | eurer, eure, eur(e)s, euren, eurem | vous | votre, vos | le vôtre, la vôtre, les vôtres | |||||
3rd | them | their | theirs | sie | ihr, ihre, ihrer, ihres, ihrem, ihren | ihrer, ihre, ihr(e)s, ihren, ihrem | leur | leur, leurs | le leur, la leur, les leurs | ||
Singular & Plural | 2nd | you | your | yours | Sie * | Ihr, Ihre, Ihrer, Ihres, Ihrem, Ihren * | Ihrer, Ihre, Ihr(e)s, Ihren, Ihrem * |
- * These forms are grammatically 3rd person plural, but refer to a naturally 2nd person.
References
- ISBN 978-0521431460.
- ^ "My Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster".
- ^ Jesperson (1949), pp. 399–405
- ^ Biber et al. 1999, pp. 340–42
- ^ All about grammar, p. 69, Rosemary Allen, 2007
- ^ Easy French step-by-step, p. 210, Myrna Bell Rochester, McGraw Hill Professional, 2008
- ^ Payne and Huddleston 2002, p. 426
- ^ Quirk et al. (1985) pp. 361–62
- ^ Fraser 2000, p. 156, 157.
- ^ "Oxford Languages | The Home of Language Data". Archived from the original on July 21, 2012.
- ^ In Norwegian bokmål written form, the phrase could alternatively be written as min bok due to bokmål's Danish heritage.
- ISBN 0-8248-0718-9. Retrieved 2012-01-08.
- ^ See canoonet: Possessivpronomen und Possessivartikel
Sources
- Biber, Douglas, et al. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken English. Harlow, Essex: Longman. ISBN 0-582-23725-4.
- Fraser, Peter M. (2000). "Ethnics as Personal Names". Greek Personal Names: Their Value as Evidence (PDF). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 149–157.
- 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 0-582-51734-6.