Tuesday 1 September 2015

part of speech - her: a determiner or a pronoun?

If Wikipedia can be trusted, it appears that there is no clear consensus on this topic.



Wikipedia's pronoun page says:




Possessive pronouns are used to indicate possession (in a broad sense). Some occur as independent noun phrases: mine, yours, hers, ours, yours, theirs...Others must accompany a noun: my, your, her, our, your, their...Those of the second type have traditionally been described as possessive adjectives, and in more modern terminology as possessive determiners. The term "possessive pronoun" is sometimes restricted to the first type.




The possessive determiner page also seems to suggest a disagreement:




The words my, your, etc. are sometimes classified, along with mine, yours etc., as possessive pronouns or genitive pronouns, since they are the possessive (or genitive) forms of the ordinary personal pronouns I, you etc. However, unlike most other pronouns, they do not behave grammatically as stand-alone nouns, but instead qualify another noun...




My personal opinion is that if possessive determiners don't stand alone as nouns, then they are just determiners and not pronouns.

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