Johanna,

I think a number of linguists/grammarians would consider both the
determiner ("my") and "possessive subject complement" ("mine") forms to
be pronouns. It's one of those standard definitional issues that hinges
on what "counts" as a major defining feature of "pronoun." A tradition
semantic-ish approach locates "pronoun-ness" in the way the word refers,
and the referentiality (sp?) of "my" and "mine" is similar. On the other
hand, if pronouns are defined as substituting for nouns, then "my" isn't
one (unless you'd like an extremely abstract workaround in which the
determiner form *is* considered to be substituting for a noun, but with
the added proviso that the possessive-determiner-marker {-s} is present
as well -- in other words, "my" has a possessive {'s} in it in the same
way that "women" has a plural {s} in it).  

I'm *not* writing this to argue with your take on the situation --
definitional issues are famous for being unresolvable -- it's just that
the presence of different definitions raises the possibility of
confusion unless it's highlighted.  

Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Johanna Rubba
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 5:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: possessive adjective/determiner/pronoun

I feel that possessive determiners (better than adjective as a  
designation) and possessive pronouns should be taught separately from  
the first, as their forms and functions are different. The determiner  
forms cannot occupy noun phrase slots like subject or direct object,  
and the possessive pronoun forms cannot modify nouns (expressions  
like "mine eyes" are archaisms).

Det.     Pronoun
my       mine
your    yours
her      hers
his      his
its       its?
our     ours
your   yours
their   theirs

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Dept.
Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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