Talk:Possessive adjective

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[edit] some languages dont have possessives

It requires more explanation: in finnish meidän means our [1] minun means my [2]

what part of speech are these words? Mrdthree 03:23, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

meidän and minun are posessive pronouns (in practice, the pronouns of me, we and minä, I, in the genitive case). But they can also work as determiners.
Tämä on meidän talomme This is our house (formal written language)
Tämä on meiän talo This is our house (less formal spoken language)
Tämä talo on meiän This house is ours
Note the difference with our as possessive determiner and ours as a possessive pronoun. So the language dictionary you referenced does not give the two main possible translations for meidän or minun. In Finnish, gentitive pronoun suffices for both so the response is overly "english" biased and "academic" for the Finnish language part of speech. --Tom 00:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 10:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Most linguists now recognize adjectives and determiners are separate word classes, and what we traditionally call possessive adjectives are actually possessive determiners. I think this article should be moved to the correct name. - TAKASUGI Shinji 23:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Strongly oppose as pædantry. We are not writing for linguists, but for the common reader, who will recognise this term, and not recognize "determiner". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:16, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose. In most cases I resist the idea that we should be writing for these "common readers" (numerous as they may be) who are uncomfortable seeing anything in WP that they don't already know. Refuting traditional misconceptions is an important goal that should not be dismissed as "pædantry". In this particular case, however, I think it's OK to keep "possessive determiner" as a secondary term, as it is in the current article, because (i) it is useful to think of determiners as a special subclass of adjectives, and (ii) in some languages (e.g. Italian) the prenominal possessive forms probably are adjectives (they can combine with an article to the left). For the moment is isn't clear if this article is only supposed to be about English, but the inter-wiki links already point to articles about possessive forms in other languages. CapnPrep 15:02, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Oh, I agree we should explain the distinction; but this is about the name of the article. It does little good to explain something when your audience hasn't found the article in the first place. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Ah, thank you for the info on Italian possesive adjectives. - TAKASUGI Shinji 00:15, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] "not pronouns but adjectives"

In this edit, Takasugi Shinji reverts an edit of mine, saying they are not pronouns but adjectives, or more precisely, determiners.

They are not adjectives. If you think they're adjectives, please explain this, cite a linguistics authority, or both.

Yes they are indeed determiners. Determiners are not a subclass of adjectives.

They are called pronouns by a lot of authorities; not only ivory-tower (?) theoretical linguists but also three of the foremost descriptive grammars of the last century: Modern English Grammar (Jespersen), Comprehensive Grammar (Quirk et al.), Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (eds Huddleston and Pullum): see the notes to the article.

If anyone wants to call them determiners, that's fine with me. Anyone who wants to call them adjectives is merely attempting to perpetuate a very dated and obviously mistaken myth.

Incidentally, what is this "(its)" within the table? -- Hoary (talk) 13:49, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I know they are determiners. Just read the Requested move above. I want to call them determiners but my proposal to move the article was rejected, as they preferred possessive adjectives.
The parentheses of "(its)" mean its as a possessive pronoun (not determiner) is obsolete. From Dictionary.com - its

While it is possible to use its as a predicate adjective (The cat is angry because the bowl you're eating out of is its!) or as a pronoun meaning “that or those belonging to it” (Your notebook pages are torn. Borrow my notebook — its aren't), such use is rare and in most circumstances strained.

- TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 01:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)