A possessive pronoun makes explicit the closeness or ownership of a grammatical person and a grammatical element: "This book is mine."
The term that concerns us now is made up of two words, which come from Latin. First of all, there is pronouns , which emanates from “pronomen.” This word is the result of the sum of two components: the prefix “pro-”, which can be translated as “in front”, and the noun “nomen”, which is synonymous with “name”. Hence the definitive meaning of that union is “instead of name.”
Secondly, there is the word possessives , which also comes, etymologically speaking, from Latin. In its case, we can determine that it arises from the evolution of the verb “posidere”. This was made up of “potis”, which is equivalent to “powerful”, and “sedere”, which means “to sit”.
What are possessive pronouns
Pronouns are a type of word that has no fixed referent since its determination is given by the relationship it establishes with other words that have already been named.
Within the group of personal pronouns (which express various grammatical categories, have no lexical content and usually refer to objects, animals or people), there are possessive pronouns .
These pronouns vary in form depending on the category of grammatical person and appear next to the nouns to determine the possessor. The possessive pronoun makes explicit the ownership, closeness or relationship between a grammatical person and a grammatical element .
In the expression "The car is now ours", the possessive pronoun "ours" appears.
Other information of interest
In addition to everything stated above, we would have to highlight other information of interest about possessive pronouns such as the following:
• They are always used after having cited the noun.
• From the first person, both singular and plural, there are the following possessive pronouns: mine, mine, mine, mines, our, ours, ours and ours.
• In the case of the second person, there are these: yours, yours, yours, yours, yours, yours, yours and yours.
• In reference to the third person, we come across these possessive pronouns: theirs, theirs, theirs and theirs.
• Any pronoun of this type, you must know that it will have the same gender and the same number as that of the noun to which it refers.
• It is common to use expressions such as “mine” or “yours”, among others, to refer to what concerns or belongs to someone in question.
Examples of possessive pronouns
"Yours", "mine", "our" y "his" son algunos ejemplos de pronombres posesivos. “That book is yours.” es una expresión que utiliza el pronombre posesivo "yours" para referirse a la propiedad de un "book". El comentario está dirigido al propietario del "book"; de lo contrario, la oración debería construirse de otra manera (“That book is his”).
If the “book” were the speaker's, the correct phrase would be “That book is mine,” since the personal pronoun “mine” indicates that ownership of the book belongs to the person who pronounces the expression.
“Our teacher is called Jacinta”, “Return to Mario what is his”, “Our players are the most expensive in the country” y “Is that car yours?” son otras expresiones con pronombres posesivos.
It should be noted that these pronouns are very similar to possessive adjectives , although possessive pronouns act independently and do not necessarily require the close presence of the noun they complement.