Talk:Possessive determiner

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It requires more explanation: in finnish meidän means our [1] minun means my [2]

what part of speech are these words? Mrdthree 03:23, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

meidän and minun are posessive pronouns (in practice, the pronouns of me, we and minä, I, in the genitive case). But they can also work as determiners.

Tämä on meidän talomme This is our house (formal written language)

Tämä on meiän talo This is our house (less formal spoken language)

Tämä talo on meiän This house is ours

Note the difference with our as possessive determiner and ours as a possessive pronoun. So the language dictionary you referenced does not give the two main possible translations for meidän or minun. In Finnish, gentitive pronoun suffices for both so the response is overly "english" biased and "academic" for the Finnish language part of speech. --Tom 00:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info - I put in a paragraph about this with the meiän example under

Possessive adjective#Possessive adjectives in other languages. Facts707 (talk) 18:39, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply

]

In this edit, Takasugi Shinji reverts an edit of mine, saying they are not pronouns but adjectives, or more precisely, determiners.

They are not adjectives. If you think they're adjectives, please explain this, cite a linguistics authority, or both.

Yes they are indeed determiners. Determiners are not a subclass of adjectives.

They are called pronouns by a lot of authorities; not only ivory-tower (?) theoretical linguists but also three of the foremost descriptive grammars of the last century: Modern English Grammar (Jespersen), Comprehensive Grammar (Quirk et al.), Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (eds Huddleston and Pullum): see the notes to the article.

If anyone wants to call them determiners, that's fine with me. Anyone who wants to call them adjectives is merely attempting to perpetuate a very dated and obviously mistaken myth.

Incidentally, what is this "(its)" within the table? -- Hoary (talk) 13:49, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I know they are determiners. Just read the Requested move above. I want to call them determiners but my proposal to move the article was rejected, as they preferred possessive adjectives.

The parentheses of "(its)" mean its as a possessive pronoun (not determiner) is obsolete. From Dictionary.com - its

While it is possible to use its as a predicate adjective (The cat is angry because the bowl you're eating out of is its!) or as a pronoun meaning “that or those belonging to it” (Your notebook pages are torn. Borrow my notebook — its aren't), such use is rare and in most circumstances strained.

- TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 01:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Its

According to CGEL (p. 471) examples like the following are "very occasionally found":

• The Guardian seems to respect its readers more than the Sun respects its.
• The council appears to be guilty of the illegal sale of houses that were not its to sell in the first place.

What does not seem to exist is the "oblique genitive" usage: *The Bank is being sued by a rich client of its.

CapnPrep (talk) 14:57, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking just the other day about this, CP. I agree with you, and I support your edit to allow such an its back into the fold – though it may need some glossing. In the age of computer games we may overhear this sort of thing:

It cheated! My score was higher than its was!

Increasingly common; but always available, I say.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 18:31, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Googling "of its is" gave two IRL examples of double-genitive its. One is only a blog posting:

• this new avatar of its is a bit surprising to loyal Apple fans.

The other is in an 1889 translation of Hegel's Logic (which is either much more convincing or much less convincing than a blogpost):

• In this way the phenomenal has its ground in this matter as its essence, its reflection-into-self in contrast with its immediacy, but, in so doing, has it only in another character of the form. This ground of its is no less phenomenal than itself, and the phenomenon in this way passes into an endless mediation of subsistence by means of form, and thus equally by non-subsistence.

I think the rareness of the form is a contingency of needfulness rather than a necessity of grammar. jnestorius^(talk) 11:50, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have a very tough time understanding the intro. It starts by claiming there's no such thing as possessive adjectives and then go on explaining what this nonexistent thing is by preparing a Dagwood sandwich of items whose relation to this nonexistent thing is obscure by a very precise perfection. What is it? Is it a colloquial waste basket term for expressing possession? The intro uses too many sub-clauses, if the sentences are split into sentences with just a few sub-clauses, then it might be comprehensible. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 08:41, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is an article about my, your, our and the like; these definitely do exist. I hesitate to say that there's no such thing as a possessive adjective, and I certainly don't claim that other languages are like English; but English, in which I happen to be fairly proficient, does not have possessive adjectives. That's the easy part. There are various lingering problems:

• People seem to think that en:WP needs an article on my, your and the rest, with stuff on similar words in other languages thrown in;
• A certain, vocal contingent hereabouts is most insistent that things in Wikipedia should be primarily called whatever they're most commonly called (regardless of any other drawbacks), and asserts that the commonest names for these things is "possessive adjectives";
• While there's agreement among all who've thought about this that these are not adjectives, there isn't complete agreement on what they are;
• While calling something "[modifier][noun]" does not necessarily imply that it is [noun] -- e.g. calling some glittery lump "fool's gold" does not imply that it is gold -- such a suggestion is very strong;
• As long as the title strongly suggests that these things are adjectives, the article should work hard to dispel this misinformation.

That's how it appears to me, anyway. It's highly unsatisfactory, of course. -- Hoary (talk) 15:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article (

Yes, if this encyclopedia has material on my, your and the like it should go with material on mine, yours and the like. However, I can't think why all that shouldn't go with material on I, me, you and the like. These are genitive, nominative and accusative forms of pronouns, that's all. Of course other languages have dative forms and so on; no obvious reason to segregate them by case. -- Hoary (talk) 15:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For practical reasons we can't put everything in

Weak pronoun). It makes sense now to see which ones can be usefully pruned/redirected/merged. I think that genitive/"possessive" forms can be a coherent topic for a reasonably-sized article. CapnPrep (talk) 17:20, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

Fair enough. I suppose "genitive" appears so close to "genital" that it dismays the prudes, so "possessive" pronoun it would be. Not as daft as the present nomenclature, that's for sure. -- Hoary (talk) 00:43, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am sad that this merger lost steam. Even in this article, we call these "[weak] possessive pronouns". It makes no sense for an encyclopedia to have one name used as a title and another used throughout the article. And since both

As far as it is now, I count two votes for the merge. And I will add mine. I vote Merge. — trlkly 08:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Whether or not the articles are merged, someone needs to sort out the problem whereby the article is titled "possessive adjective" and yet says in the first sentence that this nomenclature is "mistaken". 81.129.130.254 (talk) 00:11, 15 December 2009 (UTC).[reply]

I oppose a merge with

possessive pronoun. Theere are two quite different things here, as exemplified by the difference between my and mine. Putting them in the same article will blur the difference, especially given the muddle of terminology that is in use. 86.138.105.54 (talk) 03:35, 22 December 2009 (UTC). Position changed to neutral. 86.136.194.224 (talk) 18:19, 22 December 2009 (UTC).[reply

]

No one denies that my and mine are "quite different". But I believe that the difference can be explained more clearly if both words are treated in a single article, which also discusses the many ways in which they are at the same time quite similar. And the tedious terminological debate can be dealt with once and for all if everything is in the same article. Anyway, so far this is a moot point, since we are all Talk and no Article. CapnPrep (talk) 12:52, 22 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A major difficulty with merging is knowing what to call the article. Anyway, since this article was previously a complete and utter mess, and on the basis that I could scarcely make it any more confusing that it already was, I've substantially revised it. I've also made some changes to

possessive pronoun. I think the articles are a lot more coherent now as a pair, but if you disagree then we can work together on trying to fix things that you still feel are broken. 81.151.230.144 (talk) 15:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC).[reply

]

CapnPrep (talk) 15:37, 22 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right. (Another possible name, which occurred to me later, is "Possessive pronouns and determiners" ... duh!) On reflection, and on the basis of your suggestions, I've changed my earlier opposition to a neutral stance, FWIW. One thing I am keen on, though, is not to perpetuate the (IMO) muddled traditional notion that "my", "your" etc are pronouns. I am also not keen on calling them adjectives. In the main article text I would like to see them called possessive determiners (obviously the other names that are used and have been used should also be mentioned in a "nomenclature" section or similar). [preceding opinion retracted] To this end, I also re-proposed below that this article should be renamed "Possessive determiner" ... but if your suggested merge goes ahead then this would obviously become irrelevan). 86.136.194.224 (talk) 18:19, 22 December 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Possessive shows:

• Possessive case
• Possessive adjective
• Possessive pronoun
• Possessive suffix
• Possessive construction, pattern among words indicating possession (linguistics)

I suggest we need a Possessive (grammar) article which can serve as the lead article for all the possessive grammar related articles as well as the defining article for those topics which don't need their own article. P.S. I also did a bunch of updates to this article to try to make it more understandable. Facts707 (talk) 18:29, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talk of the apostrophe revives my weak interest in this matter of genitive pronouns. (Previously, I'd only wanted to ensure that the article didn't give misinformation.) Of course the "possessive s" of a noun phrase in English is a clitic -- it's not *the Queen's of Sheba nose; and in the Queen of Sheba's nose, it's the Queen's nose, not Sheba's. Now, it's OK in some lects, perhaps most or even all, to talk of (perhaps while pointing to) him in the red jacket. So how about Him in the red jacket's gun is loaded? This sounds very odd to me but I'd hesitate to rule that it's completely unacceptable. If it is acceptable, it doesn't alter the fact that the genitive form of him is his, but it might call for careful phrasing.

Incidentally, while I can say That sister of mine's off sick, I can't contract the "is" in That brother of his is off in Sikkim. -- Hoary (talk) 02:12, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In an ecumenical mood I rebelled against my Minimalist doctrine and looked in a couple of surveys of English grammar with very different theoretical underpinnings.

Lynn M. Berk's

English Syntax: From Word to Discourse is a clear and highly accessible descriptive grammar of English with a strong semantic and discourse/functional focus. [... It] provides a unique alternative to the formal, generative approach of other texts in the field.

says its blurb (and thus the whopping exaggeration of the last bit). Oxford UP, 1999;

Feel free to add your own. However, these should be published by university presses or comparable firms (Blackwell, Norton) and for university students of linguistics, not stuff for high school kids or for the nervous consumers of books purporting to help them to avoid misteaks and to rite good. -- Hoary (talk) 05:05, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the table of possessive forms for German and French is correct. It should explain why the genetive and dative cases respectively are quoted for personal pronouns in these languages, and why the accusative is given for English. I think the page should be merged as suggested by Wikipedia with English possessive pronouns. The cases for other languages should be cited either in the Wikidepida site for that language or in the corresponding page on the English language site which explains the case. (I will attempt to do this if there are no objections). Bewp (talk) 19:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It seems unfortunate to me that the phrase "boka mi" ("my book") was chosen as the example to illustrate possessives in Norwegian, since the Japanese "boku no" is used as an example immediately afterward. A reader who is not proficient in languages might assume that "boku no" also has something to do with books, since the phrases look so similar. I do realize that the translation of "boku no" follows the Japanese in parentheses, but I still think it's a bad idea to have all those book/bok words in a row when they mean completely different things. Thus I recommend putting a different noun in the Norwegian example so that a user can keep track of the possessive forms that the entry is actually talking about. I don't know Norwegian so I can't make a suggestion, but no doubt there is another simple noun that can serve as a substitute -- shirt, house, cat, or what have you. --Hapax (talk) 20:11, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I propose renaming this article to Possessive determiner, explaining that "possessive adjective" is an alternative name, but using the term "possessive determiner" throughout the body of the article. 81.151.230.144 (talk) 15:20, 22 December 2009 (UTC). (I just noticed that this was previously proposed but rejected, but I think sufficient time has passed for another discussion to be in order.)[reply]

Time has passed, but for me, the arguments have not changed, so, still Weak oppose. I'm all for a rename, but not this one. "Determiner" is obviously better than "adjective" for English and some other major languages, but there are many languages for which neither term is correct: Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin… It's clear that "Possessive determiner" may not represent a

worldwide view of the subject. As I said above, I would prefer the title "Possessive pronoun", and I am not at all convinced by arguments claiming (i) that my is not a pronoun, or (ii) that calling my a pronoun means that we are stupidly saying that my and mine are the same thing. In other words, I share the opinion of the CGEL, which is partially laid out in this recent Language Log posting. CapnPrep (talk) 19:28, 22 December 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

It would sure be good to nail this terminology and decide what Wikipedia should call the wretched things. It affects several articles, I think (Pronoun is another). If "my", "your" etc. are "possessive pronouns" then what are "mine", "yours" etc.? Are they possessive pronouns too, and is that satisfactory? One thing that slightly worries me is that, in my very inexpert experience, I get the impression that calling "my" etc. "personal pronouns" is an old-fashioned model that was used before the idea of determiners percolated through to dictionary writers, and that many modern dictionaries do now call them determiners. So, is calling them pronouns a backward step that is out of step with "modern" thinking? I'm not sure... 86.136.194.224 (talk) 00:45, 23 December 2009 (UTC).[reply]

My and mine are both possessive pronouns. They are the possessive forms corresponding to I; my is the dependent form and mine is the independent form. (This is the CGEL analysis, although they call them "genitive" pronouns.) "Dependent" means that my has to appear within a larger noun phrase, where it has the syntactic function of determiner. In other words, my is a pronoun and a determiner at the same time. That is the modern thinking. CapnPrep (talk) 01:44, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think I'm beginning to agree with you. Although "my" (for example) doesn't directly substitute for a noun (which seems to be one of the objections to calling it a pronoun), it does substitute for the possessive form of a noun, as does "mine" -- and calling the thing substituting for the possessive form of a noun a "possessive pronoun" does seem to make logical sense. So, to be explicit, are you advocating the terms (in full) "dependent possessive pronoun" and "independent possessive pronoun" (another option would seem to be "weak" versus "strong"?) 86.136.194.224 (talk) 02:27, 23 December 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Yes, those are the terms I would use. "Weak/strong pronoun" is already used traditionally for distinctions of a prosodic nature (see for example, Catalan personal pronouns), and it doesn't seem to me that the my/mine contrast is of the same nature. So I would stick to "dependent/independent", backed up by (at least) the CGEL and the OED. CapnPrep (talk) 07:07, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On the basis of your earlier comments about "modern thinking", I took out the "especially traditionally" caveat applying to the classification of "my" etc. as pronouns. I also tried to make the text more even-handed (removing the word "debatable", for example), added a couple more references, and made some other cosmetic changes. I have the feeling that you know more about this than I do, so please feel entirely free to make any changes to my wording that you feel are appropriate! I also tweaked the

Possessive pronoun article to directly reference the nomenclature section here. There are other articles that reference this matter (such as Pronoun), perhaps not entirely consistently with what this article says. Perhaps we should point all treatments of this issue in other articles to the "Nomenclature" section here, so that the discussion is all in one place. What do you think? 86.146.47.12 (talk) 15:01, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

(Bouncing left) Somebody's added a link to the entry for "my" in Merriam-Webster something or other. This indeed calls these things adjectives. But that's a dictionary, not a grammar. (And a stunningly unthinking dictionary, it would seem.) I don't know of any informed, intelligent grammatical analysis that calls them adjectives (and I looked, too). ¶ The majority of analyses call them pronouns (or personal pronouns). ¶ The next question is of what (personal) pronouns are. With a Minimalist analysis, they (together with these, the, etc) are determiners. But plenty of grammarians (and most descriptive grammars, such as CGEL) would call "the book", "my book" etc not DP but NP. While this article, or its successor, should give the DP analysis, I now think that simply calling them determiners would blatantly violate NPOV. (Incidentally, CGEL calls "my" etc "determinatives", saying that they may have the function of "determiner".) ¶ This is all getting complex, so pronouns they should be. Somebody could reasonably claim that the article should cover words in other languages that are semantically similar to the pronouns of English but syntactically (quasi-) adjectival. If we went along with this, we could subsume them under the broader term "pronominals". However, while this could be done, I don't see any compelling reason for doing it. And the faction (visible some way above on this very talk page) that's keen not to have accuracy disturb readers' comfortable misunderstandings would be tiresomely outraged by "pronominal". As pronouns are a broad and somewhat fuzzy category ("whosoever", "each other", etc), I recommend personal pronoun for I, me, my, mine, myself, etc. -- Hoary (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC) .... deletion Hoary (talk) 02:40, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We are already following this recommendation (see Personal pronoun and English personal pronouns). The question is, what should we call my etc., specifically? (By the way, the CGEL does not call these "determinatives"; it calls them "genitive personal pronouns". The only forms that they say can belong to both categories—personal pronoun and determinative—are we and you.) CapnPrep (talk) 15:52, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm temporarily without my copy of CGEL. I do have their Student's Introduction (SIEG) on me, however. You're right about Huddleston and Pullum not calling them determinatives; sorry about this slip of mine. Huddleston and Pullum call "my" etc "personal pronouns" (49i, p.100; 53, p.105), and "genitive NP" (which is also what they call "the senator's" in "the senator's son"), which in turn is one kind of "determiner" (23, p.90). ¶ So yes, H&P call them personal pronouns. If we need more specificity, then according to a table (53, p.105) in SIEG (but only in the most prolix form possible):

• you, it: plain non-reflexive personal pronouns
• I, he, etc: nominative non-reflexive personal pronouns
• me, him, etc: accusative non-reflexive personal pronouns
• his, its: genitive non-reflexive personal pronouns
• my, our, etc: dependent genitive non-reflexive personal pronouns
• mine, ours, etc: independent genitive non-reflexive personal pronouns
• myself, etc: plain reflexive personal pronouns

However, I infer this from a table and I don't think they anywhere write these out in full. For example, immediately under the table they discuss not "plain reflexive personal pronouns" but "reflexive pronouns".) Also I suggest that trichotomies with "plain" overemphasize form (or what SIEG calls "shape"). And so (maximally):

• you, I, etc: nominative personal pronouns
• you, me, etc: accusative personal pronouns
• his, my, etc: dependent genitive personal pronouns
• his, mine, etc: independent genitive personal pronouns
• myself, etc: reflexive personal pronouns

Or strong/weak instead of independent/dependent: I don't know what "strength" is supposed to imply here, but the terms are unambiguous and familiar, and save a few syllables. -- Hoary (talk) 02:40, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Irrespective of what we end up using as the preferred term in the article title and the main body text, I'm keen that we preserve a section discussing the different terminology in use. It's a fact that seemingly authoritative sources do use the terms "adjective" and "determiner", and we can't just ignore this. 86.146.46.169 (talk) 21:42, 7 January 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Yes, well, double-underline the "seemingly" when it comes to "adjective". But then it's hardly a surprise:

English grammar as presented to schoolchildren, university students and the general public is in a state resembling what biology might be like if teachers had paid no attention at all to On the Origin of Species (1859) or anything that followed. In fact that may be an understatement: English grammar has been drifting along unrevised not just since Darwin published his magnum opus, but since before he was born. The main outlines of English grammar are presented in 2009 just as they would have been in 1909, when Jespersen produced the first volume of his magnificent but mostly ignored 7-volume grammar, or in 1809, the year of Darwin's birth. (Abstract of this paper)

-- Hoary (talk) 02:40, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hoary, would you support, as an interim solution, renaming this article "Possessive determiner" on the grounds that it's quick and easy to do, is better than what we have at the moment, and doesn't prejudice any future decisions to merge articles or carry out other more radical surgery? 86.161.41.7 (talk) 04:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC).[reply]

On further reflection, I'd object, slightly. Oh, granted it's hugely better than the laughable "possessive adjective", but (i) "mine" etc are no less possessive determiners than "my" etc are; (ii) the status of "determiner" is controversial among linguists; (iv) they're not necessarily possessive, they're merely genitive. ¶ Most linguists call them pronouns; linguists then disagree over whether they're determiners. (The opinions of non-linguists are unimportant here.) Those linguists who don't call them pronouns do not call them adjectives. ¶ If I talk of my blood pressure, my myopia, my debt, my salary, my tastes in music, my dislikes in cuisine, my smoking habit, my collar size, my impatience with fools, etc, I'm not talking about my possessions; all I'm doing is pointing out in the simplest way that these pertain to myself. They're merely genitive, which may excite giggles from schoolboys obsessed with genitals but is actually the neutral and standard linguistics term. ¶ So how about "genitive personal pronoun"? (This would of course include "mine" and the rest of that lot.) -- Hoary (talk) 10:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It won't make sense to have the 2 together. They are 2 different things. There will be 2 much confusion, 2. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.7.203.167 (talk) 20:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with certain others here that this re-classification of possessive determiners as "adjectives" is nonsensical, and that this page needs to be merged with the possessive pronouns page. While in a very broad sense, many parts of speech and structures can be seen as "adjectival", and while that may be of some use in explaining determiners in general, it's a barren argument that says the sentence "This is more my team than your team" means we should suddenly throw possessive determiners into the pool with all adjectives. You can (appear to) modify any determiner at all in such a way, or even nouns. "It's more me than you." "The one I like is more this team than that." "A rabbit is more (a) cat than (a) dog." It's a faulty proof that breaks down with other adverbs and other kinds of predicates, or even when you simply fill back in whatever preposition or adjective was ellipted.

Anyway, my issue here is the line, "Possessive determiners always imply the article the." I agree that they they always imply "some determinative element", but it's certainly not always 'the'. A possessive structure can be re-analysed with equal facility using indefinite articles or non-definite demonstratives such as "whatever". If I have two cars, and you know I do, I can still choose refer to only one of them as "my car" without necessarily needing to define it in any way, though you may very well respond by asking me for definition: "Which car?" (This response, of course, would prove that I had just treated the possessive pronoun indefinitely.) Bravo-Alpha (talk) 23:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The wording is not great, and the statement is unsourced, but it is correct to say that English my corresponds to the. Your example illustrates that uniqueness (one of the properties associated with definiteness) is context- and speaker-dependent. This also works with the: "He poked me in the eye." "Which eye?" "I'll take the bus." "Which bus?" These examples do not prove that the can be indefinite; they show that definiteness is a more complicated notion than most people think. CapnPrep (talk) 13:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with certain others here that this re-classification of possessive determiners as "adjectives" is nonsensical, and that this page needs to be merged with the possessive pronouns page. Can we please work on fixing this? As long as we don't, this article will remain grotesque. (Though to me, "possessive" retains the notion of possession, which just isn't there with my headache, my birth, my preoccupation, my dilemma, my blood pressure and the rest. And ditto for "your dilemma is worse than mine", and so forth. So I'd prefer the less specific "genitive". Perhaps first merge to "possessive pronoun" and then consider renaming that to "genitive pronoun".) -- Hoary (talk) 01:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This was last addressed in 2011, and no improvements have been made since. I don't believe that there is any overlap between adjectives and determiners except that both modify nouns. As such, this section (Comparison with determiners and adjectives) needs to be deleted.

"mine" is a pronoun, not of "me" but "it" (or some other referant): it (which belongs to me). We both own cars. Mine is red = The car (that I own) is red. The red car is mine = The red car is the one (I own). Danielklein (talk) 00:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that there is about one editor on this page who thinks that the article should be called "possessive adjective", and everybody else agrees that they are not adjectives. There are various options, but an immediate improvement would be to rename to "possessive determiner". If nobody objects, I will move the page. Count Truthstein (talk) 19:11, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Count. I'm still sure that "genitive" is better than "possessive", and that "pronoun" is more theory-neutral than "determiner"; but the previous use of "adjective" was an embarrassment. -- Hoary (talk) 00:29, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

While a couple of inconsistencies remain and the organization can be improved, I think this article has progressed in a positive direction. I support the choice of the terms possessive determiner (my, you, her, ...) and possessive pronoun (mine, yours, hers, ...).

I now reproduce Hoary's comment from the talk page for the article "Noun phrase", since the commentary belongs here rather than on that page. Hoary wrote:

"Well, we disagree in various ways. Those described in the last paragraph, though not strictly relevant to this article, are easiest to describe. "Arguing is a waste of time" -- is "arguing" within that sentence a noun or a verb? It can't be replaced by "write", but it can be replaced by "golf", and it therefore seems to have the distribution of a noun; yet most linguists call it a verb. So the form of the lexeme can determine its distribution, and thus the impossibility of *"Your must come over for dinner" doesn't mean that "your" can't be a pronoun. Assuming that you don't have in mind the production of new cases, I'm not quite sure what it means for English not to have a _productive_ case system, given that English can use the "'s" clitic for new words ("the app's best point"); but let's suppose that it indeed lacks one. How does this rule out case distinctions among "I, me, my, mine"? If "my" is "possessive", does this "possession" have lexical meaning, what with "my" birth, debt, regret, shame, gratitude, death (or indeed top, mind, fingers, toes, leg or grave), none of which I meaningfully "possess"? Etc etc. -- Hoary (talk) 08:02, 1 August 2012 (UTC)"

I would like to respond to a couple of points in this comment. I don't think that the observation about the distribution of gerunds such as "arguing" carries over to the distribution of possessive determiners. Possessive determiners distribute like other determiners in a clear and largely consistent manner in English.

I don't think the term genitive determiner or genitive pronoun is appropriate for these words in English. English lacks morphological case. Yes, there are vestiges of case in the language, but from a synchronic point of view, one really cannot argue that English has nominative or accusative or dative or genitive case. Possessive 's is a clitic; it is not a case marker like one finds in related languages such as German; it attaches to entire phrases, whereas case markers usually attach to nouns and/or to the pre-modifiers of nouns. Case markers in related languages are affixes, not clitics.

We also know that possessive determiners do not bare genitive case because in a related language such as German, these words can take case endings. Thus a form like dein- 'your' is inflected for gender, number, and CASE, which means that these words can appear bearing any of the various cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive). The determiner dein itself, however, really lacks case on its own taken out of context. From a synchronic point of view, there is nothing genitive about it.

Finally, I agree that the designation "possessive" is not really accurate. But I think it is the best that can be done given the options under consideration. Furthermore, I also think the designation "possessive" is really widespread. --Tjo3ya (talk) 17:47, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is the status of noun-derived possessives such as John's and the girl's? Are these also called possessive determiners (and/or possessive adjectives), or are they just phrases that have the same function? I'm going to add some mention of such forms to the article, but I would prefer it if we could say something based on sources (or at least someone's broad familiarity with sources). Victor Yus (talk) 11:16, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've merged all the information from this article, as well as some from the former short articles on possessive pronouns and possessive case, into a single Possessive article (apart from some of the language-specific information, mostly about English, which I've placed at English possessive). That being done, I don't see any need to retain this article separately, unless someone plans to add significant amounts of information specifically about possessive determiners, which I don't currently see happening. Unless anyone has some reasoned objection, I plan to replace this article with a redirect to the general one, as I've already done with the short articles mentioned above. Victor Yus (talk) 09:59, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Victor, I've read over this article (again). To be frank, I think this topic is better presented as three separate articles: 1. possessive determiner, 2. possessive pronoun, and perhaps 3. possessives. The article on possessives might provide just a brief overview, pointing to the other two articles. There should be redirection links that link the terms possessive adjective and genitive pronoun, into their respective article.

The reason I think this is that the terminology overlaps and is confusing. If it all appears in one greater article, the content may be overwhelming. Broken down into three articles, I think the information becomes more accessible. There can be some redundancy across the articles, this redundancy actually being helping to promote understanding. My suggestion here probably runs counter to what you have done so far, but there it is.

Of course I think that syntax trees would promote understanding of topic.

But do you think the content of the Possessive article at the moment is overwhelming? For me, the fact that the terminology is so overlapping and inconsistent is an argument in favour of wrapping it up into one article - if you try to separate it, you end up effectively repeating yourself, and the job of maintaining and improving the articles ends up requiring two or three times the amount of work, or just not being done. This can be seen in the situation we have (or had before my recent changes) - a possessive pronouns article that was still just a stub, this possessive determiners article that seems in fact to be about p. determiners and p. adjectives and also a bit about p. pronouns and a few other random assorted things. I don't see a point in having a separate article called "possessive determiner" (or "possessive adjective") unless someone's got a fair amount of specific (presumably quite technical) information on that exact topic that won't be expected to be of much interest to someone who's interested broadly in possessives. And certainly as we stand at the moment I don't see a reason for this article to exist right now, since all the information (and more) can be found, I hope more tidily and accurately presented, in the main possessives article. Victor Yus (talk) 15:55, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

On the one hand, there isn't that much information in this article. On the other hand, it seems to me that is isn't obvious where to look in the article "Possessive" about possessive pronouns and the difference between possessive determiners and possessive pronouns. If they are merged then I think that the "possessive" article needs some work to be more accessible. At the moment I feel that this article is useful for readers looking for information on particular subjects.

I see that "Possessive pronoun" has been redirected to "possessive". It is inconsistent to have an article on possessive determiners and not one on possessive pronouns (meaning words such as "hers" as in "It is hers"), so it would make sense to merge this article. Another factor is that there are arguments that possessive determiners are pronouns, but also determiners - so merging into "English possessive" and "Possessive" would be better than merging them into a "possessive pronoun" article. It is probably not a problem to handle other possessive forms (not pronouns or determiners) in the same article, they can just be considered under a different sub-section.

So my feeling at the moment is that this article should be merged into other articles, but the other articles need some work before a redirect is made. Count Truthstein (talk) 19:06, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Victor,

I have just read the article on possessives. I have a number of suggestions that may be helpful in the long run (but probably not in the short run). Above all, I think your work to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles is an important and valuable contribution.

The article on possessives has the following weaknesses, in my view: Too dense. Too many examples from too many various languages packed together in too tight of a space. The forms are not summarized in tables like they are in the possessive determiner article. Examples are not presented in a reader friendly manner; they are not set off from the text. The article overwhelms the reader. The article fails to begin slowly enough. It should focus primarily on English at first, branching out to other languages lower down.

The particular strength of the article is the section on terminology. That sort of summary of the inconsistent use of terminology is very valuable. The actual information in the article is also good, but as stated, I think it is too dense. It is going to overwhelm readers.

My preferred way of presenting this sort of information is to have one overarching article that then branches out into the related subphenomena. A good example of what I mean is the ellipsis article, which branches out into the various types of ellipsis (gapping, pseudogapping, noun ellipsis, etc.) and the discontinuity article, which branches out to the various types of discontinuites (scrambling, extraposition, topicalization, wh-fronting). The overview article can be less dense, allowing the details to be presented in the more specialized subpages. A bit of redundancy across the articles makes things less dense and thus more accessible. Consider working in a link to the article on noun ellipsis.

These suggestions may not be what you want to hear. In the big picture, I emphasize that I think your work is helpful and valuable. I will likely not challenge whatever you decide to do, although I may (or may not) decide to come in and rework some of what you've done at a later point. --Tjo3ya (talk) 05:08, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: article is biased, non-neutral and misleading. "Possessive determiners constitute a sub-class of determiners [...]. They are also known as possessive adjectives." When one classifies words like "my" as possessive adjectives, then these words form a sub-class of adjectives and not of determiners. Words like "my" are also classified as adjectival possessive pronouns. "Possessive determiners may also be taken to include possessive forms made from nouns" Maybe "possessive determiners" include such words, but "possessive adjectives" shouldn't and "adjectival possessive pronouns" don't. Please help improve this article if you can.

To my mind neither of these points indicates anything wrong with the article. If you can improve the wording, please do, but it seems that anything we say about possessive determiners just needs to hold when they are considered as determiners; we don't need to keep repeating on every possible occasion that they are sometimes given other names. Probably better would be just to combine this article with Possessive, since there is no uniformity of terminology and no particular advantage in considering a particular type of possessive forms separately. W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this article is unnecessary. The page is currently English-focused, which makes it redundant with English possessive, and barely covers general language possessives, should be covered in Possessive. I'd delete and merge the article into Possessive, which is a more general term, and seems to be a somewhat better article besides. 183.83.201.216 (talk) 09:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

...I hadn't noticed how long ago the original comment was. Wow. 183.83.201.216 (talk) 09:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]