Possessive pronouns | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

All right, grammarians, let's get down to it and start talking about possessive pronouns. A possessive pronoun is a pronoun that we use to show possession of something, which is just sort of a fancy way of saying you have it. So possession equals having stuff.

Now, we can essentially divide possessive pronouns in half because on this side of the divide we have a list of pronouns that behave like adjectives. On this side, we have a group of pronouns that behave like nouns. I'll list them, and then we'll give some examples.

So the possessive pronoun that behaves like an adjective for me is "my." The possessive pronoun that behaves like a noun for me is "mine." "Our" behaves like an adjective; "ours" behaves like a noun. "Your" behaves like an adjective; "yours" behaves like a noun. "Her" behaves like an adjective; "hers" behaves like a noun. "His" behaves like an adjective; "his" behaves like a noun. "It" behaves like an adjective; "it" behaves like a noun. And "there" behaves like an adjective, and "theirs" behaves like a noun.

Now, I'd like to point out that nowhere in any of these words does there appear such a thing as an apostrophe—that little guy. I know this much is true: there are no apostrophes in possessive pronouns. So it's not "it's," it's not "hours," it's "ours," like that. It's not "yours" with an apostrophe, like that; it's "yours" with no apostrophe. Likewise, it's not "hers" or "his." This is the big one; I mean something entirely different.

Or "theirs." Across all varieties of English, the possessive pronouns don't have any apostrophes in them. So this is a very handsome looking chart, if I do say so myself, but it doesn't really do the work of explaining what I mean by saying "my" behaves like an adjective and "mine" behaves like a noun.

So let me get some example sentences down, and we'll see what I mean. So let's say that there was a book that I owned. How would I talk about it? I could do it two different ways using these possessive pronouns. I could say, “That is my book,” and here "my" is working as an adjective that modifies and describes "book."

Or I could say, “That book is mine,” and here we're using "is" to connect "book" to "mine," and so in that case, we're using "mine" as a noun. How do we know it's acting like a noun? Because we can use it independently of the word "book." So if someone says to me, “David, where is your book?”, I can say, “Mine is on the bedside table.” Nowhere in this sentence does the word "book" appear, but we can use "mine" independently because we've established in a previous sentence the thing we're talking about is this book.

So let's talk about my co-worker, Garish—a nice fella. And let's say that Garish has a very nice hat. We would say, “That is Garish's hat.” This is what we'd call a possessive noun. But talking of Garish again, we could say, “That is his hat.” Now we're using that possessive pronoun as an adjective to modify "hat." Whose hat is it? It is his hat.

If we wanted to use the personal pronoun that acted like a noun, we would say, “That hat is his,” and we can also use "his" independently of the word "hat" by saying, "His is the hat with polka dots."

So we've got two piles of possessive pronouns here, and one pile behaves like adjectives: "my," "our," "your," "her," "his," "its," "their." And the other behaves like nouns: "mine," "ours," "yours," "hers," "his," "its," "theirs."

And remember, none of them contain an apostrophe. You can learn anything, David out.