Possessive determiner
Possessive determiners constitute a sub-class of determiners which modify a noun by attributing possession to someone or something. They are also known as
possessive adjectives. Examples in English include possessive forms of the personal pronouns, namely
my,
your,
his,
her,
its,
our and
their, but excluding the forms such as
mine and
ours that are used as possessive pronouns and not as determiners. Possessive determiners may also be taken to include possessive forms made from nouns, from other pronouns and from noun phrases, such as
John's,
the girl's,
somebody's,
the king of Spain's, when used to modify a following noun. In many languages, possessive determiners are subject to agreement with the noun they modify, as in the French
mon,
ma,
mes, respectively the masculine singular, feminine singular and plural forms corresponding to the English
my.