We've had some interesting discussions of Part of Speech on this list,
and, while we don't all agree as to which ones and how many English
grammar needs, there is broad agreement that they are defined on
morphological and syntactic grounds, as well as semantic.  School
grammars tend to offer much more notional classification reflecting the
eight pars orationis of the Greco-Latin grammatical tradition.

I've used the "possessive pronoun" terminology consistently throughout
my career, both as a linguist and as a grammar teacher.  The words
simply do not belong to the same lexical class (part of speech).
English adjectives may take the suffixes -er and -est, are preceded by
number words and determiners (articles, demonstratives, possessive
pronouns), and may also be predicative without changing form.
Possessive pronouns, on the other hand, precede number words and
adjectives, are uninflectable except in that they are the diachronic
product of inflecting a pronoun root, and may change form to be
predicative (mine, (thine,) hers, ours, yours, theirs).  "His" and "its"
don't show this inflection.  And, of course, pronouns a closed class of
function words while adjectives are an open class of content words.

The standard reference grammars listed below pretty much agree on this
treatment.  I've used the Greenbaum as a text a number of times.  School
grammars tend to be more influenced by grammatical traditions.

Some standard reference grammars:

Biber, Douglas; Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward
Finegan.  1999.  Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English.  London:
Pearson ESL.

Greenbaum, Sidney.  1996.  The Oxford English grammar.  New York:
Oxford University Press.

Huddleston, Rodney D., and Geoffrey K. Pullum.  2002.  The Cambridge
Grammar of the English Language.  London:  Cambridge University Press. 

Quirk, Randolph; Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik.
1985A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.  London:  Longman.

For historical purposes, I go to Jespersen's seven volume A Modern
English Grammar on Historical Principles, but modern reference grammars
agree quite extensively with his grammatical analyses.

In short, I agree with Swan.

Herb

This may sound elementary but is anyone using a reference grammar which
classifies 'my', 'your', 'her' etc. as 'possessive pronouns' and not as
'possessive adjectives'?.

For example, Thomson and Martinet (A Practical English Grammar - page
75) 
classifies them as possessive adjectives.

On the other hand, Michael Swan's Practical English Usage (p. 416) 
classifies them as possessive pronouns and states 'They are not
adjectives 
though they are sometimes called 'possessive adjectives' in older
grammars 
and dictionaries'.

Is there anyone on the List who follows Swan's classification?

Ron Sheen 

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/