GUAYAQUIL UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING CAREER

SUBJECT: ENGLISH GROUP N ° 3-3

NAME: SOLANGE PLUA ESPINOZA DATE: 09/02/2022

INVESTIGATION PRONOUNS AND POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES

POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS

Possessive pronouns are words used to indicate that something belongs to someone or has a

direct relationship with someone else. They are often used in speech and writing to avoid repetition.

Consider this example:

 I had dinner with Susa and Susa’s brother, Michael.

To avoid repeating the name Jane in the sentence, we use the possessive pronoun her to make

the sentence neater and less repetitive:

 I had dinner with Susa and her brother, Michael.

Possessive Pronouns Examples

Here are some examples of dependent possessive pronouns in sentences:

 I will bring my favorite beer to the party.  They promised to do their

 She could not believe her  Amazon sent an email to its

Here are some examples of independent possessive pronouns in sentences:

 Who owns this bike? Is it yours?

 That’s ours. Please don’t touch it.

 The land west of the field is theirs.

 This money is all mine.

I can see theirs, but I can’t see his.

Possessive Pronouns Rules:

There are two groups of possessive pronouns:

Dependent Possessive Pronouns

My, your, his, her, its, our, your (pl) and their are the dependent possessive pronouns.

Sometimes called possessive adjectives, they are used to indicate ownership or a relationship. For

example:

 This is my

 Is this man your husband?

 Welcome to our
  The dog chased its

The rule of dependent possessive pronouns is that they are used before a noun. You can think

of them this way: they are dependent on the noun that comes after them.

The possessive pronouns are mostly used to show ownership between a person and the noun

that follows. However, there are some instances when we don’t exactly own the thing in question

– people, countries, jobs etc. – but in these cases the possessive pronoun is used to show ownership

in the sense of a direct relationship:

 I love my

 Is Jamaica your country of birth?

 Those are her

Sometimes an adjective can come between the possessive pronoun and noun, but only if it is

acting as a modifier for that noun:

 I lost my favourite pencil.

 Did you see her blue dress?

We sat in our designated seats.

Independent Possessive Pronouns

Mine, ours, yours, his, hers and theirs are the independent possessive pronouns. They are not

immediately followed by a noun. You can think of them this way: they are independent because

they don’t need a noun after them. For example:

 If the candy bar isn’t yours, it must belong to someone else.

 This cake is

 It is mine.

An independent possessive pronoun will normally come at the end of the sentence or clause.

While it should not be followed by a noun, it does need auxiliary information before it appears to

show the reader what the possessive pronoun is indicating ownership of – the cake, candy bar, car

etc. For example, if we simply say it is mine, we won’t know what it is. We will only know whose

it is. For us to know what it is, we need information before the possessive pronoun appears.

Common Mistakes

It can be quite easy to mix up independent and dependent possessive pronouns. It means that

we can make incorrect sentences like this:

 This is mine

We know this is incorrect as a noun (house) never follows at independent possessive pronoun.

The correct sentence would be:

 This my

Generally, dependent possessive pronouns are shorter than their independent possessive

pronoun counterparts:
 Dependent possessive pronouns Independent possessive pronouns

My Mine

Your (sing) Yours

His, her His, hers

Its Its

Your (plural) Yours

Our Ours

Their Theirs

*Its is very rarely used as an independent possessive pronoun. An example can be found in

Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, but it is effectively never used in modern English.

However, one of the most common mistakes made in everyday English is the mixing up of the

possessive pronoun its with the contraction it’s (the shortened form of it is). The golden rule to

remember is that we never use apostrophes with possessive pronouns.

 The boat had a red stripe on its Correct.

 The boat had a red stripe on it’s Incorrect.

 A horse swished its tail happily in the field.

A horse swished it’s tail happily in the field. Incorrect.

Providing Clarity
 Possessive pronouns are designed to provide clarity on ownership by making sentences less

repetitious and more concise. This will make your speech and writing easier to understand.

Consider this example of a sentence that does not use possessive pronouns.

 That is Jack’s house. Jack’s neighbour, Bob, lives next door. In the park across the road

from Jack’s and Bob’s houses, Jack’s and Bob’s wives are chatting.

Look how we can provide clarity with the use of possessive pronouns.

That is Jack’s house. His neighbour, Bob, lives next door. In the park across the road

from their houses, their wives are chatting.

Simplify Your Sentence

Above all, the objective of using possessive pronouns is to simplify your sentence. This will

provide clarity and even give your speech and writing a sense of style. Remember these three

golden rules to use possessive pronouns correctly:

 Never use an apostrophe with possessive pronouns.

 A dependent possessive pronoun is followed by a noun or a noun with an adjective

modifier (it needs one because it is dependent).

An independent possessive pronoun is not followed by a noun (it doesn’t need one because it

is independent), and it will usually be at the end of a sentence or clause.

There are many occasions in which we need to refer to something that belongs to a person. For

example, in the simple question, “What’s your name?” The word ‘your’ lets us indicate whose

name we are talking about. There are two ways to describe possession in English – using adjectives

and using pronouns. Here are some details to help you understand how to use each and what the

difference is.

Possessive Adjectives

We use possessive adjectives to express who owns (or ‘possesses’) something. A possessive

adjective is used in front of a noun (a thing). For example:

My computer.

Your pen.

Our car.

The possessive adjectives in English are as follows:

Subject Possessive adjective

I Mine

You (sing) Yours

He His

She Her

It Its

We Our
 You (plural) Your

They Their

Here are some examples:

What’s your address?

My car is in front of the school.

This is Jack and this is his wife, Sue.

Put your coats on the back of your seats.

Our new Maths teacher is very nice.

What a beautiful bird! Its feathers are bright blue!

My sister is always tired. Her job is difficult.

His and Her

Remember that in English, nouns don’t have a gender and are therefore neither masculine nor

feminine. So when we use ‘his’ we mean that the object is ‘of a man’, and when we use ‘her’ we

mean that the object is ‘of a woman’. For example: