Johanna, I suspect the term "possessive pronoun" arises out of the Western grammatical tradition, going back to Varro, Dionysus Thrax, etc. I don't object to the term as long as it's clear that they are a subclass of determiners. Herb These pronominal forms are actually what linguists call "determiners", along with such traditional classes as articles. They have particular restrictions; for instance, only one can appear per noun phrase. One can have multiple adjectives in a noun phrase ("my brand-new, big, red balloon") but only one determiner ("my the balloon" is impossible). In any case, they are not pronouns; they cannot stand in place of a noun phrase. The possessive pronouns are the forms "mine, ours, yours, his, hers", which _can_ take the place of noun phrases. For instance: A: My car has broken down. B: Take mine. (Take _my car_.) A: You have a power drill; use it. B: But yours has better torque. (But _your power drill_) "Possessive adjectives" was the better traditional term, as these do occupy a slot in which they modify a noun. But by modern linguistic definitions, they are not adjectives. I don't know why anyone ever called them possessive pronouns. It's odd that any formal grammarian would, since, even though they resemble the actual possessive pronouns, they behave quite differently. (I mean "formal" here in the sense of a traditional grammarian who is punctilious about such distinctions.) Also, one would never confuse a possessive pronoun with a possessive adjective: no one would imagine phrases like "yours book" or "mine power drill". 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 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/