possessive pronoun
- noun
- /pəˈzɛsɪv ˈproʊnaʊn/
- Specialized
:
pronombre posesivo
- In the sentence 'This book is mine,' the word 'mine' acts as a possessive pronoun.
Examples
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Pronominal form errors were defined as substitution errors for subject, object, reflexive, and possessive pronouns and possessive determiners.
Academic text (2012) -
Their is a possessive pronoun; there indicates direction... lots of manure right.
Blog text (1) -
Its is a possessive pronoun meaning, more or less, of it or belonging to it.
Blog text (1) -
Such nouns can incorporate possessive pronouns.
Blog text (3) -
Here, arguably, the second-person possessive pronoun presents no special interpretive difficulties.
Academic text (1994) -
The word 'yours' is a possessive pronoun that shows ownership.
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She used the possessive pronoun 'hers' to indicate that the bike belonged to her.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a pronoun that indicates possession' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'possessive' (marking possession) with 'pronoun' (a word replacing a noun). This compositional structure is cross-linguistically common and follows regular morphological and syntactic patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will understand the term.
Etymology
Possessive pronoun comes from the words possessive and pronoun and names short words that replace a noun and show who owns something. Imagine pointing at a bag and saying 'mine' instead of 'my bag', which shows why these words mean 'ownership'.
