English possessive
In English, possessive words or phrases exist for nouns and most pronouns, as well as some noun phrases. These can play the roles of determiners or of nouns.
For nouns, noun phrases, and some pronouns, the possessive is generally formed with the suffix -s, but in some cases just with the addition of an apostrophe to an existing s. This form is sometimes called the Saxon genitive, reflecting the suffix's derivation from Old English. However, personal pronouns have irregular possessives that do not use an apostrophe, such as its, and most of them have different forms for possessive determiners and possessive pronouns, such as my and mine or your and yours.
Possessives are one of the means by which genitive constructions are formed in modern English, the other principal one being the use of the preposition of. It is sometimes stated that the possessives represent a grammatical case, called the genitive or possessive case; however, some linguists do not accept this view and regard the s ending as either a phrasal affix, an edge affix, or a clitic, rather than as a case ending.
Formation of possessive construction
Nouns and noun phrases
The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as s, and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending s: namely, as when following a sibilant sound, as when following any other voiceless consonant, and as otherwise. For example:- Mitch has the possessive Mitch's
- luck has the possessive luck's
- man has the singular possessive man's and the plural possessive men's
- the possessive of cats is cats, both words being pronounced
- the possessive of James is spelled James's and pronounced -, but, singularly, the possessive of Jesus is often spelled adding only an apostrophe.
More generally, the s morpheme can be attached to the last word of a noun phrase, even if the head noun does not end the phrase. For example, the phrase the king of Spain can form the possessive the king of Spain's, and – in informal style – the phrase the man we saw yesterday can form the man we saw yesterday's. Both John's and Laura's house and John and Laura's house are correct, though the latter is more common, especially in idiomatic speech. See below.
Pronouns
Unlike other noun phrases which only have a single possessive form, personal pronouns in English have two possessive forms: possessive determiners and possessive pronouns. In most cases, these are different from each other.For example, the pronoun I has possessive determiner my and possessive pronoun mine; you has your and yours; he has his for both; she has her and hers; it has its for both; we has our and ours; they has their and theirs. The archaic thou has thy and thine. For a full table and further details, see English personal pronouns.
The possessive its has no apostrophe, although it is sometimes written with one in error by confusion with the common possessive ending -'s and the contraction it's used for it is and it has. Possessive its was originally formed with an apostrophe in the 17th century, but it had been dropped by the early 19th century, presumably on the pattern of the apostrophe being omitted from personal possessive pronouns.
The interrogative and relative pronoun who has the possessive whose. In its relative use, whose can also refer to inanimate antecedents, but its interrogative use always refers to persons.
Other pronouns that form possessives do so in the same way as nouns, with 's, for example one's, somebody's. Certain pronouns, such as the common demonstratives this, that, these, and those, do not form their possessives using s, and of this, of that, etc., are used instead.
English possessive pronouns agree with the gender of their antecedent or referent, whereas in other languages, such as Italian, the possessive pronoun agrees with the gender of the head noun of the noun phrase in which it appears. To exemplify these differences, compare he loved his mother, in which his is masculine in agreement with he, to ama sua madre, in which sua is feminine in agreement with madre.
Syntactic functions of possessive words or phrases
English possessives play two principal roles in syntax:- the role of possessive determiners standing before a noun, as in my house or John's two sisters;
- the role of possessive pronouns, standing independently in place of a noun, as in mine is large; they prefer John's.
As determiners
Possessive determiners are not used in combination with articles or other definite determiners. For example, it is not correct to say *the my hat, *a my hat or *this my hat; an alternative is provided in the last two cases by the "double genitive" as described in the following section – a hat of mine, this hat of mine. Possessive determiners can nonetheless be combined with certain quantifiers, as in my six hats. See English determiners for more details.
A possessive adjective can be intensified with the word own, which can itself be either an adjective or a pronoun: my own , John's own .
In some expressions the possessive has itself taken on the role of a noun modifier, as in cow's milk. It then no longer functions as a determiner; adjectives and determiners can be placed before it, as in the warm cow's milk, where idiomatically the and warm now refer to the milk, not to the cow.
Possessive relationships can also be expressed periphrastically, by preceding the noun or noun phrase with the preposition of, although possessives are usually more idiomatic where a true relationship of possession is involved. Some examples:
- the child's bag might also be expressed as the bag of the child
- our cats' mother might be expressed as the mother of our cats
- the system's failure might be expressed as the failure of the system
As pronouns
Possessives can also play the role of nouns or pronouns; namely they can stand alone as a noun phrase, without qualifying a noun. In this role they can function as the subject or object of verbs, or as a complement of prepositions. When a form corresponding to a personal pronoun is used in this role, the correct form must be used, as described above.Examples:
- I'll do my work, and you do yours.
- My car is old, Mary's is new.
- ''Your house is nice, but I prefer to stay in mine.''
Double genitive
- an officer/Of the prefectes
- that hard heart of thine
- this extreme exactness of his
- that poor mother of mine and uses of the title Mother of Mine,
- Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine, and frequent uses of the title Friend of Mine
- a picture of the king's
Some writers have stigmatized this usage. However, it has a history in careful English. "Moreover, in some sentences the double genitive offers the only way to express what is meant. There is no substitute for it in a sentence such as That's the only friend of yours that I've ever met, since sentences such as That's your only friend that I've ever met and That's your only friend, whom I've ever met are not grammatical." Cf. "That's the only one of your friends that I've ever met" "he construction is confined to human referents: compare a friend of the Gallery / no fault of the Gallery."
The Oxford English Dictionary says that this usage was "Originally partitive, but subseq ... simple possessive ... or as equivalent to an appositive phrase ...".