Welcome to your Talk About Possession lesson! In this topic we talk about:
• Whose…?
• Possessive ‘s
Take the quizzes when you’re ready! If you’re having problems, use the comment box to contact our English Teachers.
Whose…?
With the question whose…? (whose…?), we can respond with a possessive ‘s (reserved for people and pets), a possessive adjective followed by a noun, or a possessive pronoun:
“Whose house is this?”
“It’s Claire’s house.” ↔ “It’s her house.” ↔ “It’s hers.”
The possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns are unchangeable, and correspond to personal subject pronouns:
| Personal pronoun | I | you | he | she | it | we | they |
| Possessive Adjective | my | your | his | her | its | our | their |
| Possessive Pronoun | mine | yours | his | hers | its | ours | theirs |
His, her, hers allow us to identify the gender of the possessor:
“It’s not her cat, it’s his.”
“It’s not her (a female) cat, it’s his (a male).”
Possessive ‘s
For plural nouns that finish with -s, we use the apostrophe alone. But we add ‘s for singular proper nouns. For example:
“Our friends’ house.”
“Mr Jones‘s house.”
We use ‘s alone to avoid repeating a noun. For example:
“It isn’t my dog, it’s my mother‘s.”
(implied: “my mother’s dog.”)
We also use ‘s as a translation as “someone’s place”:
“She is at the baker‘s.”
Vocabulaire“A friend of mine.” Note that we used ‘s against the rules, we’re not talking about people! |
