Possessive Pronouns

Possessive Pronouns Chart

You can chart possessive pronouns based on five aspects put along two axes: person and number.

These constitute all of the possessive pronouns in the English language. Suffice it to say, there aren’t that many. However, you might be wondering what the difference between “independent” and “dependent” pronouns is.

Since there aren’t that many possessive pronouns, it shouldn’t take long to provide examples for each.

Possessive Pronouns Examples

Here is a list of all possessive pronouns with example sentences.

First-person possessive pronouns:

Second-person possessive pronouns:

Third-person possessive pronouns:

Fig 2. - "Person" refers to perspective in English grammar. "I" play baseball (first-person). "You" play baseball (second-person). "I" and "you" are unique perspectives.

Possessive Pronouns Used In Sentences

Because English is an analytic language, possessive pronouns must be used in particular places in sentences.

A dependent possessive pronoun will always appear before what it possesses.

If a possessive pronoun is independent (e.g., mine), it will appear as the object in a sentence.

In the case of independent possessive pronouns, that would look like:

Possessive Pronouns as Adjectives

There are multiple ways to codify English pronouns. Pertinent to the discussion here, there is another way to look at the dependent genitive pronouns (my, your, his, her, its, their).

In this alternate way of categorization, you can describe these determiners as possessive adjectives because they modify a noun.

In this construction, “her” functions in some sense like an adjective. After all, an adjective gives some kind of information about a noun, and “her” does that. It also abides by many of the grammatical and syntactical rules of an adjective.

However, a determiner like “her” does not always abide by the grammatical and syntactical rules of an adjective. For instance, in a list of adjectives describing a noun, you would construct the sentence in this way:

You could not, however, insert “her” into this list.

So while there is merit in describing determiners as adjectives or “my” as a “possessive adjective,” beware of taking this simplistic definition and running with it. Pronouns exist in an ambiguous and oft-discussed space of English grammar, so take the time to understand any codification of their bits and bobs.