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The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as ' s (the letter s preceded by an apostrophe), and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending (e)s: namely, as / ɪ z / when following a sibilant sound (/ s /, / z /, / ʃ /, / ʒ /, / tʃ / or / dʒ /), as / s / when following ...
(subject) (object) (possessive) First-person Singular I: me myself mine my mine (before vowel) me (esp. BrE) Plural we: us ourselves ourself: ours our Second-person Singular Standard you: you yourself yours your Archaic informal: thou: thee: thyself: thine: thy thine (before vowel) Plural Standard you you yourselves yours your Archaic: ye: you ...
Many languages have verbs that can be used to form clauses denoting possession. For example, English uses the verb have for that purpose, French uses avoir etc. There are often alternative ways of expressing such relationships (for example, the verbs possess and belong and others can be used in English in appropriate contexts: see also have got).
The personal pronouns of many languages correspond to both a set of possessive determiners and a set of possessive pronouns.For example, the English personal pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we and they correspond to the possessive determiners my, your, his, her, its, our and their and also to the (substantive) possessive pronouns mine, yours, his, hers, its (rare), ours and theirs.
In many languages, the verb takes a form dependent on the person of the subject and whether it is singular or plural. In English, this happens with the verb to be as follows: I am (first-person singular) you are/thou art (second-person singular) he, she, one, it is (third-person singular) we are (first-person plural) you are/ye are (second ...
In American English (AmE), collective nouns are almost always singular in construction: the committee was unable to agree. However, when a speaker wishes to emphasize that the individuals are acting separately, a plural pronoun may be employed with a singular or plural verb: the team takes their seats, rather than the team takes its seats.
Some authors who classify both sets of words as "possessive pronouns" or "genitive pronouns" apply the terms dependent/independent [7] or weak/strong [8] to refer, respectively, to my, your, etc., and mine, yours, etc. For example, under that scheme, my is termed a dependent possessive pronoun and mine an independent possessive pronoun.
A few English verbs have no special forms that indicate subject agreement (I may, you may, he may), and the verb to be has an additional form am that can only be used with the pronoun I as the subject. Verbs in written French exhibit more intensive agreement morphology than English verbs: je suis (I am), tu es ("you are", singular informal ...