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Possessive Pronouns Examples: Get It Now, It's Free
Possessive Pronouns Examples: Get It Now, It's Free
Possessive Pronouns Examples: Get It Now, It's Free
My, your, his, her, its, our, your (pl) and their are the dependent possessive pronouns. Sometimes called possessive
adjectives, they are used to indicate ownership or a relationship. For example:
This is my
Is this man your husband?
Welcome to our
The dog chased its
The rule of dependent possessive pronouns is that they are used before a noun. You can think of them this way:
they are dependent on the noun that comes after them.
The possessive pronouns are mostly used to show ownership between a person and the noun that follows.
However, there are some instances when we don’t exactly own the thing in question – people, countries, jobs etc. –
but in these cases the possessive pronoun is used to show ownership in the sense of a direct relationship:
I love my
Is Jamaica your country of birth?
Those are her
Sometimes an adjective can come between the possessive pronoun and noun, but only if it is acting as a modifier
for that noun:
Mine, ours, yours, his, hers and theirs are the independent possessive pronouns. They are not immediately
followed by a noun. You can think of them this way: they are independent because they don’t need a noun after
them. For example:
An independent possessive pronoun will normally come at the end of the sentence or clause. While it should not be
followed by a noun, it does need auxiliary information before it appears to show the reader what the possessive
pronoun is indicating ownership of – the cake, candy bar, car etc. For example, if we simply say it is mine, we
won’t know what it is. We will only know whose it is. For us to know what it is, we need information before the
possessive pronoun appears.
Common Mistakes
It can be quite easy to mix up independent and dependent possessive pronouns. It means that we can make
incorrect sentences like this:
This is mine
We know this is incorrect as a noun (house) never follows at independent possessive pronoun. The correct
sentence would be:
This my
Generally, dependent possessive pronouns are shorter than their independent possessive pronoun counterparts:
However, one of the most common mistakes made in everyday English is the mixing up of the possessive pronoun
its with the contraction it’s (the shortened form of it is). The golden rule to remember is that we never use
apostrophes with possessive pronouns.
Providing Clarity
Possessive pronouns are designed to provide clarity on ownership by making sentences less repetitious and more
concise. This will make your speech and writing easier to understand.
Consider this example of a sentence that does not use possessive pronouns.
That is Jack’s house. Jack’s neighbour, Bob, lives next door. In the park across the road from Jack’s and
Bob’s houses, Jack’s and Bob’s wives are chatting.
Look how we can provide clarity with the use of possessive pronouns.
That is Jack’s house. His neighbour, Bob, lives next door. In the park across the road from their houses, their
wives are chatting.
An independent possessive pronoun is not followed by a noun (it doesn’t need one because it is independent), and
it will usually be at the end of a sentence or clause.