Possessive Pronouns for intermediate learners
Possessive pronouns show ownership and indicate that something belongs to someone particular. With their help, we can make a possessive phrase shorter.
What Are Possessive Pronouns?
Tip!
Please note that the possessive pronouns used for the second person singular and second person plural forms are the same.
Now, let us study the examples carefully:
Those cars near the tree are
Is this novel
As you can see, these possessive pronouns can replace nouns and noun phrases without being followed by a noun.
How to Use Them
As stated above, possessive pronouns can be used to replace nouns or noun phrases. Look at the following examples:
This is
Those are
As you can see, the possessive pronoun has replaced nouns.
Tip!
If these possessive pronouns are to be followed by nouns, they will change accordingly and will be called possessive determiners. Some of the possessive determiners are used in the examples below:
You're hurting
As you can see, the possessive adjective 'my' is followed by a noun and cannot be used without it.
I see it's
As it was shown in the table, we have no possessive pronouns for the third person singular non-humans. Look at the following example:
That toy is its.
Warning!
Although we have no possessive pronouns for the third person singular non-humans, we can use a possessive determiner instead. Study the following examples:
As you can see, 'its' is followed by a noun which makes it a possessive determiner.
How to Ask Questions About Possession
In order to ask to whom an item or a person belongs, we can use the term 'Whose' in sentences that means 'for whom'. Let us study the following examples carefully:
Warning!
Be careful as to not add an article (a, an, the) before the possessive pronouns. Pay attention to the examples below:
She is wearing a dress. It's a hers).
the his are black).