Possessive Adjectives and Possessive Pronouns

Possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns are used to show who something belongs to.
We use a possessive adjective if there is a noun after it.

Possessive Adjectives

		Possessive adjective	Noun
1st person singular 2nd person singular 3rd person sing. (m) 3rd person sing. (fem) 3rd person sing. (obj) 1st person plural 2nd person plural 3rd person plural	This is	my your his her its our your their	book.

Examples

This land is your land, this land is my land (Woody Guthrie, This Land is Your Land).
I was rich as I could be in my coat of many colors (Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors).

Possessive Pronouns

If we don’t use a noun after, we use a possessive pronoun.

		Possessive pronoun
1st person singular 2nd person singular 3rd person sing. (m) 3rd person sing. (fem) 3rd person sing. (obj) 1st person plural 2nd person plural 3rd person plural	This book is	mine. yours. his. hers. its. ours. yours. theirs.

Examples

“Whose book is this?” “It’s mine.”
That’s not yours, it’s hers.

If we say the name of the person which something belongs to, we can say it with or without a noun after the name:

Examples

It’s John’s.
It’s John’s car.

Category: Grammar Reference Tags: Level A1 - Elementary