Possessive determiner


Possessive determiners constitute a sub-class of determiners which modify a noun by attributing possession to someone or something. They are also known as possessive adjectives, although the latter term is sometimes used with a wider meaning.
Examples in English include possessive forms of the personal pronouns, namely: my, your, his, her, its, our and their, but excluding those forms such as mine, yours, ours, and theirs that are used as possessive pronouns but not as determiners. Possessive determiners may also be taken to include possessive forms made from nouns, from other pronouns and from noun phrases, such as John's, the girl's, somebody's, the king of Spain's, when used to modify a following noun.
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 definite article. For example, my car implies the car that belongs to me/is used by me. It is not correct to precede possessives with an article or other definite determiner such as a demonstrative, although they can combine with quantifiers in the same ways that the can. This is not the case in all languages; for example in Italian the possessive is usually preceded by another determiner such as an article, as in la mia macchina.

Nomenclature

While some classify the words my, your, etc. as possessive adjectives, others, due to the differences noted above, do 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 possessive pronouns or genitive pronouns, since they are the possessive forms of the ordinary personal pronouns I, you etc. However, unlike most other pronouns, they do not behave grammatically as stand-alone nouns, but instead qualify another noun – as in my book. For this reason, other authors restrict the term "possessive pronoun" to the group of words mine, yours etc. that substitute directly for a noun or noun phrase.
Some authors who classify both sets of words as "possessive pronouns" or "genitive pronouns" apply the terms dependent/independent or weak/strong to refer, respectively, to my, your, etc. and mine, yours, etc. For example, under this 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 possessivus has its equivalent in κτητικός. Term ktetic is used in reference to ktetic adjectives, and also in reference to other ktetic forms, including names derived from ktetics.

Possessive determiners in English

The basic pronominal possessive determiners in modern English are my, your, his, her, its, our, their and whose. As noted above, they indicate definiteness, like the definite article the. Archaic forms include thy and mine/thine. For details, see English personal pronouns.
Other possessive determiners are the words and phrases formed by attaching the clitic -'s to other pronouns, to nouns and to noun 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, where boka is the definite form of the feminine noun bok, and mi 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 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 with Elle a perdu son chapeau. In this 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 and nos voitures. In Modern Spanish, however, possessive determiners do not change for gender, e.g. mi hijo y mi hija, but do change for plurality of the possessee, e.g. Mi esposa tiene mis gafas. Spanish possessive pronouns do agree with gender and plurality of the possessee, e.g. Esas niñas son nuestras. Ese bolígrafo es nuestro..
In Italian, constructions such as il tuo libro nero and quel tuo libro nero are grammatically correct. In Italian, the possessive determiners behave in almost every respect like adjectives.
Some Germanic languages, such as English and Dutch, use different pronouns depending on the owner. English has the words his and her; Dutch uses the zijn and haar. Other Germanic languages, such as German and several Dutch dialects including Limburgish and Brabantian, additionally use different forms depending on the grammatical gender of the object owned. German has sein for masculine and ihr for feminine possessors; in German, the "hat" sentences above would be Er hat seinen Hut verloren and Sie hat ihren Hut verloren respectively. Brabantian also inflects zijn and haar according to the grammatical gender and number of the thing owned.
Some languages have no distinctive possessive determiners, and express possession by declining personal pronouns in the genitive or possessive case, or by using possessive suffixes or particles. In Japanese, for example, boku no, is used for my or mine. In Mandarin Chinese, the possessive determiner and possessive pronoun take the same form as each other: the form associated with wǒ is wǒ de, where de is the possessive particle.
Some languages use the same word for both the possessive determiner and the matching possessive pronoun. For example, in Finnish meidän can mean either our or ours.
On the other hand, some Micronesian languages such as Pohnpeian have a large number of possessive classifiers that reflect both the possessor and the possessum: nah pwihk means "his pig;" ah pwihk means "his pig;" and kene pwihk means "pork; his pig." As a further example, tehnweren ohlo war means "that man's canoe," referring to a person of high status.

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:
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 determiners and possessive pronouns.