possessiveadjective

Possessive adjectives, also called possessive determiners, are a class of words used to express ownership or association and to modify the noun that follows them. They appear before the noun they describe and do not stand alone in a sentence. They agree with the possessor, indicating who owns or is connected to what.

English has seven possessive adjectives: my, your, his, her, its, our, and their. My, your, our, and their work with both singular and plural nouns. His and her mark third-person singular possessors, with their usage for gender-neutral or plural ownership. Its denotes possession by an inanimate object or animal when gender is not specified. Note that possessive adjectives are determiners; they modify a noun and do not act as pronouns.

Possessive adjectives differ from possessive pronouns, which can stand alone. For example, in the sentence “This is my book,” my functions as a determiner; in “This book is mine,” mine is a pronoun. In modern English, the determiner their is also used as a gender-neutral singular possessive determiner when the owner is unknown or nonbinary (for example, “Someone left their umbrella”). Possessive adjectives do not require apostrophes to indicate possession, unlike possessive forms formed with nouns.

Usage notes: place the possessive adjective immediately before the noun it modifies (my car, your idea, their house). It agrees with the owner and remains the same for gender and number of the possessed noun.