Possessives: reciprocal pronouns

Level: intermediate

When two or more people do the same thing, we can use the possessive forms of the reciprocal pronouns each other’s and one another’s:

They helped to look after each other’s children.

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Submitted by OlaIELTS on Wed, 17/06/2020 - 14:26

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It's very educative.

Submitted by Sophy on Fri, 23/02/2018 - 20:44

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Hi Peter! I have a question for you. In exercise n° 1 about possessive : reciprocal pronouns I believe my answer was correct, however, the system informs me that I am wrong. Coul you help me?

Hello Sophy,

Did you press the Show Answers button (which appears after you press Finish) to see the difference between your answer and the system's answer? If you still don't understand what's wrong after that, please tell us what you think the correct answer is.

All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by Tomoaki Hachiya on Thu, 01/02/2018 - 06:57

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As for possesive form, if you put an apostrophe to make possesive form, you cannot differentiate a single and plural, e.g. I will follow my teacher's plan. I will follow my teachers' plan. The pronunciations of above two sentences are exactly the same, aren't they? Then you cannot have get the information if the teacher is an only one teacher or two or more teachers, right? Maybe, it can't be helped anyway. Please let me know your advice.

Hello Tomoaki Hachiya,

You are correct. The pronunciation of these forms is identical and so only the context tells us if the speaker is referring to one or to more than one teacher.

 

Best wishes,

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Excuse me! As the above sentences given, I'm afraid I'm wrong with the plural noun after singular possessive and singular noun after plural possessive. So are these sentences correct? If they are correct, can you identify them? Thank you. 1. I will follow my teacher's plan. 2. I will follow my teacher's plans. 3. I will follow my teachers' plan. 4. I will follow my teachers' plans.

Hi Kunthea,

All the sentences are correct! But they mean different things.

  1. one teacher, one plan
  2. one teacher, many plans
  3. many teachers, one plan
  4. many teachers, many plans

Does that make sense?

Jonathan

The LearnEnglish Team