Possessive determiners aredeterminers which expresspossession. Sometraditional grammars of English refer to them aspossessive adjectives, though they do not have the same syntactic distribution asbona fideadjectives.^[1]

Examples inEnglish include possessive forms of thepersonal pronouns, namely:my,your,his,her,its,our andtheir, but excluding those forms such asmine,yours,ours, andtheirs that are used aspossessive pronouns but not as determiners. Possessive determiners may also be taken to include possessive forms made fromnouns, from otherpronouns and fromnoun phrases, such asJohn's,the girl's,somebody's,the king of Spain's, when used to modify a following noun.

In many languages, possessive determiners are subject toagreement with the noun they modify, as in theFrenchmon,ma,mes, respectively the masculine singular, feminine singular and plural forms corresponding to the Englishmy.

Possessive determiners, as used in English and some other languages, imply thedefinite article. For example,my car impliesthe car of mine. (However, "This is the car I have" implies that it is the only car you have, whereas "This is my car" does not imply that to the same extent. Similarly, "my brother" can mean equally well "one of my brothers" as "the one brother I have".) It is not correct to precede possessives with an article (*the my car) or (in today's English) another definite determiner such as ademonstrative (*this my car), although they can combine with quantifiers in the same ways thatthe can (all my cars,my three cars, etc.; seeEnglish determiners). This is not the case in all languages; for example inItalian the possessive is usually preceded by another determiner such as an article, as inla mia macchina ("my car", literally "the my car").^{[citation needed]}

While some classify the wordsmy,your, etc. aspossessive adjectives,^[2] the differences noted above make others not consider them adjectives, at least not in English, and preferpossessive determiners. In some other languages, the equivalent parts of speech behave more like true adjectives, however.

The wordsmy,your, etc., are sometimes classified, along withmine,yours, etc., aspossessive pronouns^[3][4] orgenitive pronouns, since they are thepossessive (orgenitive) forms of the ordinarypersonal pronounsI,you, etc. However, unlike most otherpronouns, they do not behave grammatically as stand-alone nouns but instead qualify another noun, as inmy book (contrasted withthat's mine, for example, in whichmine substitutes for a complete noun phrase such asmy book). For that reason, other authors restrict the term "possessive pronoun" to the group of wordsmine,yours, etc., which replaces directly a noun or noun phrase.^[5][6]

Some authors who classify both sets of words as "possessive pronouns" or "genitive pronouns" apply the termsdependent/independent^[7] orweak/strong^[8] to refer, respectively, tomy,your, etc., andmine,yours, etc. For example, under that scheme,my is termed adependent possessive pronoun andmine anindependent possessive pronoun.

In linguistic terminology, possessive forms are also referred to as ktetic forms sinceLatin:possessivus has its equivalent inAncient Greek:κτητικός (ktētikós). The term ktetic is used in reference to ktetic (possessive) adjectives and also to other ktetic (possessive) forms, including names derived from ktetics (ktetic personal names).^[9]

The basicpronominal possessive determiners in Modern English are personalmy,your,his,her,its,our andtheir, interrogativewhose^[10] (as inWhose coat is this?) and relativewhose (as inthe woman whose car was stolen orthe car whose license plate was stolen). As noted above, they indicate definiteness, like thedefinite articlethe.Whosever meansof whichever person or thing. Archaic forms includethy,mine/thine (formy/thy before a vowel) andwhosesoever. For details, seeEnglish personal pronouns.

Other possessive determiners (although they may not always be classed as such though they play the same role insyntax) are the words and phrases formed by attaching theclitic-'s (or sometimes just anapostrophe after-s) to indefinite pronouns, nouns ornoun phrases (sometimes calleddeterminer phrases). Examples includeJane's,heaven's,the boy's,Jesus',the soldiers',those men's,the king of England's,one's,somebody's.

For more details of the formation and use of possessives in English, seeEnglish possessive. For more details about the use of determiners generally, seeEnglish determiners.

Though in English the possessive determiners indicate definiteness, in other languages the definiteness needs to be added separately for grammatical correctness.

InNorwegian the phrase "my book" would beboka mi,^[11] whereboka is the definite form of the feminine nounbok (book), andmi (my) is the possessive pronoun following feminine singular nouns.

In someRomance languages such asFrench andItalian, the gender of the possessive determiners agrees with the thing(s) owned, not with the owner. French, for example, in the singular, usesson for masculine nouns and also for feminine noun phrases starting with a vowel,sa elsewhere; compareIl a perdu son chapeau ("He lost his hat") withElle a perdu son chapeau ("She lost her hat"). In that respect, the possessive determiners in these languages resemble ordinary adjectives. French also correlates possessive determiners to both the plurality of the possessor and possessee, as innotre voiture (our car) andnos voitures (our cars). InModern Spanish, however, not all possessive determiners change to reflect the gender of the possessee, as is the case formi,tu, andsu, e.g.mi hijo y mi hija ("my son and my daughter"). In the first and second person plural forms--nuestra/nuestro andvuestra/vuestro—possessive determiners do mark gender inflection in the singular, e.g.,nuestra nuera y nuestro yerno ("our daughter-in-law and our son-in-law"). All possessive determiners mark the plurality of the possessee, e.g.Mi esposa tiene mis gafas ("My wife has my glasses"). Spanish possessivepronouns agree with the gender and plurality of the possessee, e.g.Esas niñas son nuestras. Ese bolígrafo es nuestro. ("Those girls are ours. That pen is ours.").

InItalian, constructions such asil tuo libro nero ("the your book black ", rendered in English as "your black book") andquel tuo libro nero ("that your book black", rendered in English as "that black book of yours") are grammatically correct. In Italian, possessive determiners behave in almost every respect like adjectives.

SomeGermanic languages, such as English andDutch, use different pronouns depending on the owner. English has the (uninflected) wordshis andher; Dutch uses the (uninflected)zijn andhaar. Other Germanic languages, such asGerman and severalDutch dialects includingLimburgish andBrabantian, also use different forms depending on the grammatical gender of the object owned. German hassein (with inflected forms likeseine) for masculine andihr (with inflected forms likeihre) for feminine possessors; in German, the "hat" sentences above would beEr hat seinen Hut verloren (He lost his hat) andSie hat ihren Hut verloren (She lost her hat) respectively. Brabantian also inflectszijn (his) andhaar (her) according to the grammatical gender and number of the thing(s) owned.

Some languages have no distinctive possessive determiners and expresspossession by declining personal pronouns in thegenitive orpossessive case, or by usingpossessive suffixes orparticles. InJapanese, for example,boku no (a word forI coupled with thegenitive particleno), is used formy ormine. InMandarin Chinese, the possessive determiner and possessive pronoun take the same form as each other: the form associated withwǒ ("I") iswǒ de ("my", "mine"), wherede is the possessive particle.

Some languages use the same word for both the possessive determiner and the matching possessive pronoun. For example, inFinnish,meidän can mean eitherour orours.

On the other hand, someMicronesian languages such asPohnpeian have a large number of possessive classifiers that reflect both the possessor and the possessum:nah pwihk means "his (live) pig;"ah pwihk means "his (butchered) pig;" andkene pwihk means "pork; his pig (to eat)." As a further example,tehnweren ohlo war (POSSESSIVECLASS:HONORIFIC-CANOE-n that-man canoe) means "that man's canoe," referring to a person of high status.^[12]

For possessive determiners as elsewhere, the genitive does not always indicate strictpossession, but rather a general sense ofbelonging orclose identification with. Consider the following examples involvingrelational nouns:

• my mother ormy people

Here, a person does not own his or her mother, but rather has a close relationship with her. The same applies tomy people, which meanspeople I am closely associated with orpeople I identify with.

• his train (as in "If Bob doesn't get to the station in ten minutes he's going to misshis train")

Here, Bob most likely does not own the train and insteadhis train meansthe train Bob plans to travel on.

• my CD (as in "The kids are enjoyingmy CD")

my CD could refer to a CD that I own, a CD owned by someone else but with music that I recorded as an artist, a CD that I have just given to someone here as a gift, or one with some other relation to me that would be identifiable in the context.

Possessive determiners commonly have similar forms topersonal pronouns. In addition, they have correspondingpossessive pronouns, which are also phonetically similar. The following chart shows the English,German,^[13] andFrench personal pronouns, possessive determiners and possessive pronouns.

• * These forms are grammatically 3rd person plural, but refer to a naturally 2nd person.

• Biber, Douglas,et al. (1999)Longman Grammar of Spoken English. Harlow, Essex: Longman.ISBN 0-582-23725-4.
• Fraser, Peter M. (2000). "Ethnics as Personal Names".Greek Personal Names: Their Value as Evidence(PDF). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 149–157.
• Jespersen, Otto. (1949)A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part 2 (Syntax, vol. 1). Copenhagen: Munksgaard; London: George Allen and Unwin.
• Payne, John, and Rodney Huddleston. (2002) "Nouns and Noun Phrases." Chap. 5 of Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum.The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
• Quirk, Randolph,et al. (1985)A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow, Essex: Longman.ISBN 0-582-51734-6.

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