Possessivedeclinable

Possessivedeclinable is a term used in linguistic typology to describe a class of words that encode possession and are morphologically declined. In languages that have possessive declension, these forms take inflectional endings for grammatical categories such as person, number, gender, or case, and often function as determiners or adjectives rather than independent pronouns. The form of a possessive declinable typically agrees with the noun it modifies and signals who owns the possessed item.

In practice, possessive declinables behave like adjectives in that they combine with the noun and change form to match the noun’s properties. For example, in Russian the possessive adjective shows agreement with gender and number (мой for masculine singular, моя for feminine singular, моё for neuter singular, мои for plural), while in German the possessive determiner mein declines to mein, meine, meinen, which align with the noun’s gender and case. Other languages such as Polish (mój, moja, moje) and Portuguese (meu, minha, meus, minhas) illustrate similar patterns. English, by contrast, generally uses non-declinable possessives like my or your, with pronoun forms mine or yours as separate words.

The term helps distinguish languages that actively inflect possessive forms from those with non-declinable possessives, and it is mainly used in linguistic discussions of morphology and syntax rather than in prescriptive grammar. It complements related concepts such as possessive pronouns, possessive adjectives, and agreement systems, highlighting the diversity of how languages encode ownership within noun phrases.