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possessive pronoun

 
Dictionary: possessive pronoun

n.
One of several pronouns designating possession and capable of substituting for noun phrases.


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English grammar series
English grammar

A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something. Like all other pronouns, it substitutes a noun phrase and can prevent its repetition. For example, in the phrase, "These glasses are mine, not yours", the words "mine" and "yours" are possessive pronouns and stand for "my glasses" and "your glasses," respectively.

There are seven possessive pronouns in modern English: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs, plus the antiquated possessive pronoun thy/thine. The clitic -'s also works as a possessive pronoun such as Jack's. For a more complete list, see the full list of English pronouns.

Some languages have neither possessive pronouns nor possessive adjectives, and express possession by declining the personal pronouns in the genitive or possessive case, or by using possessive suffixes. In Finnish, for example, minun ("I's"), means "mine" or "my".[citation needed]

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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Possessive pronoun" Read more