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sitifan,
355 days ago
 CalifJim“Possessives
Adjectives Pronouns
my mine
his his
her hers
its its
our ours
your yours
their theirs
whose whose
”
[Its] is normally not used as a pronoun.
This is its food.
*This food is its.
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AlpheccaStars
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605731
Fri, 05 Dec 08 02:41 PM
Folks: Let's take a look at it from this view. George - this is a person's name, a proper noun. George is happy. - George in nominative case. He gave George a book. - George is in dative case (indirect object ) This is George's book. - George is in possessive case. This book is George's. - George is in possessive case. George does not change - it is still a noun, no matter what grammatical case it is in.
I - a pronoun. I am happy. - nominative case. He gave me a book. dative case (indirect object ) This is my book. possessive case. This book is mine. possessive case. Just because the form of the pronoun changes with case, does not mean that it has changed from being what it is - a pronoun
Joined on
Sun, Oct 12 2008
Senior Member
3,508
The pen is mightier than the sword. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
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Cool Breeze
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605880
Fri, 05 Dec 08 05:31 PM
It is true that my doesn't replace a noun and thus doesn't deserve to be called a pronoun. It's equally true that grammarians in some countries call it a pronoun anyway. The only problem I can see is confusion among students - and others, too.
I see lots of terms on these forums that I have never seen anywhere before - and consequently I don't know what exactly they mean and I have no intention of using them myself.
I have difficulty considering my an adjective because I was taught in school that an adjective can be given as an answer to the question "What is it/he etc. like?"
What's it like? - It's old. It's beautiful. It's incredible. It's alive. It's my. 
I never saw an adjective that couldn't follow is.
Whatever anyone wants to call my, there will be a problem of some kind. As I see it, no label is completely satisfactory, but we have to call it something, I suppose. Why don't we call it whatever we want to call it?
CB
Joined on
Fri, Apr 7 2006
Senior Member
3,979
"I hope you'll all live to be 150 years old - and the last voice you hear is mine!" Frank Sinatra on stage in Oslo, Norway, 28 September 1991
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CalifJim
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605955
Fri, 05 Dec 08 07:52 PM
Cool Breeze “I never saw an adjective that couldn't follow is.”
I'll bet you have! He is a mere child. The child is mere??? What is the child like? Mere.
He is a possible candidate. The candidate is possible??? What is the candidate like? Possible. He is a confirmed bachelor. The bachelor is confirmed??? What is the bachelor like? Confirmed. ____ True, the possessive adjectives are not central cases of the category 'adjective'. Many linguists call them determiners, and I prefer that term myself. In any case, the designation 'pronoun' can, I think, confuse students who read the contradictory definition of a pronoun as a noun substitute. If the possessive 'adjectives' (i.e., possessive determiners) are pronouns, they are certainly special kinds of pronouns because they can't serve as subjects, objects, and so on, which all other pronouns can do. If this is just a matter of terminology, then any word will do, of course. We could call my, your, ... 'orscuffs' or 'croobles', for example. But 'adjective', even if unsatisfactory in some respects, at least suggests that these words ought to be placed in front of nouns, which is convenient for learners, I think. CJ
Joined on
Mon, Aug 2 2004
California
Veteran Member
22,463
"There are no facts, only interpretations" - Nietzsche
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CalifJim
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606011
Fri, 05 Dec 08 09:05 PM
AlpheccaStars “it is still a noun, no matter what grammatical case it is in. ”
I can't agree. There are numerous examples where the addition of a morpheme changes the grammatical category of a word. -tion changes a verb to a noun (evict, eviction); -ness changes an adjective to a noun (happy, happiness); and so on; there are many more examples like these.
The ending 's is no different. It's a morpheme that changes a noun to a determiner (or more loosely, 'adjective'). The base form George is still a noun within the word George's, just as the base form happy is still an adjective in the word happiness. But the category changes just as much in the one as in the other by the addition of the morpheme. The same thing happens in other languages. A noun, perhaps day, is given an ending, say -ly, and it is then said to be in another 'case', call it the "frequentative" case, or whatever. While the combination day-ly can be called a "noun in the 'frequentative' case", it is a noun in name only, because it is now used only as, say, an adverb (daily). If in English grammar we wished to call the change of day to daily, week to weekly, and so on, "changing the case of a noun", we could do so, but that wouldn't make daily and weekly nouns. It happens that the form resulting when 's is added is irregular in the case of adding 's to pronouns. For some reason the function of 's is taken over by an r in most of them and my (and thy) seems to follow no pattern at all. The historical development of these forms is a total mess to any but the experts, but I would argue that the messiness is irrelevant to my point that adding a morpheme to a word (or incorporating the morpheme within it) can change its category. George + 's > George's it + 's > its / he + 's > his you + 's > you + r > your / they + 's > they > r > their she/her + 's > she/her + r > her / we/us + 's > we/us + r > our me > my / (thee > thy)
In spite of the extreme irregularity, I would say that the category changes from 'pronoun' to 'determiner' by the addition of some morpheme (or some equivalent process).
CJ
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Cool Breeze
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Sat, 06 Dec 08 12:04 PM
CalifJim “ Cool Breeze “I never saw an adjective that couldn't follow is.”
I'll bet you have!
He is a mere child. The child is mere??? What is the child like? Mere.
”
Indeed. Right you are! I never thought of that. Maybe I was taught incorrectly - or I may remember it all incorrectly. After all, It's been a while since I attended school. Maybe the reason grammarians call more words pronouns in Scandinavia and some other countries than elsewhere is the fact that in many languages the word for pronoun doesn't resemble the word noun at all. For example, noun is substantiivi in Finnish and pronoun is pronomini.
Whatever the reason, such words as every, some, any, my and many others are called pronouns here. I have never heard a Finnish equivalent for determiner. The word is instantly understandable, of course, but there is no such part of speech or word class in Scandinavia. We do use a similar word but it can be used to refer to many words that probably wouldn't be called determiners in English. Or would they? I really don't know. For example old is a determiner in Finnish in a sentence like He is an old man.
My real intention in my previous post was to say that no harm is done even if words like my are called adjectives in some countries and pronouns in some others. So far nobody has suggested a third name. I try to avoid grammatical terms as much as possibe in my posts but sometimes one just has to use a few. Fortunately a lot of the terms seem to be universal and thus create no confusion.
CB
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AlpheccaStars
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Sat, 06 Dec 08 04:09 PM
Sorry, CJ, but my "grammar lingo" is limited to the Latin and Russian grammar (besides English) I studied eons ago in high school. I am certainly not a theorist in linguistics! Russian is a highly inflected language, having as I recall, 6 cases with different endings for singlar and plural.Adjectives are similarly inflected.
We still called the word a noun (pronoun or adjective), even though its case ending was not nominative. Specifically, we called it a noun / pronoun / adjective in the (whatever the ending designated) case; singular / plural form. If these words are now called something different, depending on their case due to advances in the study of linguistics, then I have learned something new.
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CalifJim
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Sat, 06 Dec 08 05:10 PM
AlpheccaStars “Russian is a highly inflected language, having as I recall, 6 cases with different endings for singlar and plural.Adjectives are similarly inflected.”
Ah! OK. Then you probably recall the Russian "instrumental case". In English "with a pen", "with a knife", but all in one word with an ending. Using that as an example, you know that a "noun in the instrumental case" can never be used as the subject of a sentence. Only "nouns in the nominative case" can be used there. So that's my point. If you can't use that form of a noun as a subject, it's not "really" a noun. It's function has changed. In the instrumental case it's used adverbially. In my view the addition of the instrumental case ending has changed its category from noun to adverb. Not in your view. The same discussions are going on among the linguists. They argue one side and the other of this issue the same as we do here on the forum. They just have a lot more lingo to sling about! I've seen the possessive structure called a pronoun, an adjective, a determiner, a specifier, and, believe it or not, a prepositional phrase! In the latter case, actually a postpositional phrase, the 's being the "postposition"!
CJ
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AlpheccaStars
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Sat, 06 Dec 08 06:24 PM
Indeed, modern English syntax is all (well, mostly) about position, not inflection. In Russian, a "noun in the instrumental case" would not be positioned as a subject in a sentence - it's against the syntactical rules. So I suppose it is a confusion of grammatical function (subject, object), and naming the entity that we place in a structure while making sure that it has followed the syntactic rules. I understand the difference, but it sure might get confusing for learners. I gave George a kiss. - I would call the entity "George" a noun in the dative case ("dative" might be outdated, though - I remember it from Latin)! George gave me a kiss - I would call the entity "George" a noun in the nominative case; and I think of "me" as the pronoun "I" in its inflected dative case. The character of English does lead to some funny consequences which are impossible in Russian:: (The words "man" and "dog" would not be identical in Russian)
The dog bit the man. The man bit the dog. It's interesting to me that Old English was highly inflected, and we still have vestiges in modern English. These are still in the process of being phased out; "who/whom" and "will/shall" come to mind.
I suppose these kinds of topics give plenty of fodder for linguists to chew on!
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