There is a kind of compromise position between "if it's not acting as a
noun, it can't be a pronoun" and "if it's anaphoric, it's a pronoun" --
but it's a bit weaselly. With regular possessives, it's apparent that a
noun or noun phrase is being used as a determiner, with the genitive -s
acting as a marker of this status:

	John				John's daughter
	The king of England	the king of England's daughter

I don't think there's any disagreement that "John" is basically a noun,
but the suffix -s turns it into a determiner. Now for the weaselly part:
for forms like "my" and "your," we can just argue that there is, in
fact, a full pronoun in there somewhere -- but the genitive marking
folds into the form itself so it's hard to see. So, just like many
linguists would like to treat "went" as "go+ed," we can treat "my" as
"I+s." The "I" part is an anaphoric pronoun, but the suffix makes it a
determiner. 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

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