possessives: pronouns
Can you match these possessive pronouns to the right personal pronouns and possessive adjectives:
yours, mine, theirs, ours, hers, his
| Subject | Object | Possessive adjectives |
Possessive pronouns |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | me | my | |
| You | you | your | |
| He | him | his | |
| She | her | her | |
| It | it | its | |
| We | us | our | |
| They | them | their |
We can use a possessive pronoun instead of a noun phrase:
| Is that John’s car? | No, it’s [ |
> | No, it’s mine. | |
| Whose coat is this? | Is it [ |
> | Is it yours? | |
| Her coat is grey, [ |
Her coat is grey, | mine is brown. |
We can use possessive pronouns after of.
We can say:
Susan is one of my friends.
or
Susan is a friend of mine.
but not
Susan is a friend of me
or
I am one of Susan's friends.
or
I am a friend of Susan's.
but not
I am a friend of Susan
Search
Tags for teachers
- No terms applicable.
A - Z of Content
- 1 of 6
- ››
Grammar Support
Read more about these areas of grammar:
Comments
"Susan is a friend of mine.
but not
Susan is a friend of me."
"I am a friend of Susan's.
but not
I am a friend of Susan."
Before visiting this page I used to write "I am a friend of Susan". Only after visiting here I knew that I was wrong. So This page is very important to me.
Thank You, The LearnEnglish Team!!!!
I am very happy , thank you so much . Olessya
Some people would argue that "a friend of Susan's" is ungrammatical and that "a friend of Susan" is in fact the correct form, given that the "of" denotes possession. See Simon Heffer's book Strictly English (pp.41-2), for example.
Hello,
Interesting comment! I take your and Simon Heffer's point, but using 'of' with a possessive form is fairly standard usage. As a teacher of English as a foreign language, I'm happy for my students to use it and would only point out to them that some people consider it ungrammatical if they were going to be writing in an environment where they might be criticised for this - and such environments are very rare.
Using 'of' with a possessive does not give rise to any ambiguity or impede communication, so this rule is mostly an appeal to consistency and I personally feel that English has so many illogicalities that trying to remove them one at a time is like painting the Forth Bridge with a toothbrush.
As I'm sure you know, there are many types of grammar, such as descriptive, pedagogical and prescriptive. Simon Heffer wrote an unashamed prescriptive grammar, which has rather different aims from the grammar on this site. Heffer believes in a particular and uncommon way to write English and is trying to encourage others to follow it. That is not what the grammar here (written by Dave Willis, an renowned expert in teaching English) is for.
I hesitate to criticise Heffer, since he is a far better writer than I can ever hope to be, but I tend to agree with reviewers of 'Strictly English' like David Crystal and Geoff Pullum that many of his rules are somewhat archaic and unrealistic about English in the 21st century.
Anyway, thanks for raising this - it was interesting to think about.
Best wishes - and happy new year!
Adam
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello,
I want to improve my english, especially listenning skill, what can i do now, please help me
Thanks & Regards
Hello,
We have lots of materials to help you improve your listening. Have a look at our Listen and Watch section and hopefully one of the series there will be useful and interesting for you.
Best wishes,
Adam
The LearnEnglish Team
hi everyone. nice exercise.
cheers
it's very easy
thank god i got 100%
You are a best learner.
too easy:PP