• mycodesucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        7 days ago

        It is as a possessive adjective.

        As in “her car” or “her apple”. It’s not a TRUE adjective, so some modern textbooks call them determiners instead, but functionally this class of possessives is closer to adjectives than nouns.

          • mycodesucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            7 days ago

            They’re sometimes called that, but they’re not actually nouns either. You can’t use them as nouns. So calling them pronouns is a bit of a misnomer and most modern textbooks don’t call them that for that reason, especially in EFL. They’re their own special class of word, but they follow more adjective rules than noun rules, so you’ll see them called all kinds of things. Possessive pronouns, possessive adjectives, possessive determiners… But all of those names for them have problems. Possessive pronouns is also problematic because they get confused with the ACTUAL pronoun set, which is mine, yours, his, hers, ours, and theirs, which DO function as nouns.

            • luciferofastora@feddit.orgEnglish
              3·
              7 days ago

              They’re their own special class of word, but they follow more adjective rules than noun rules, so you’ll see them called all kinds of things

              Does that make the present participle (progressive) forms of verbs like “writing” adjectives too, because they’re used like adjectives rather than like verbs (“I am tired”, “I am writing”, not “I writing”)? Does it make gerunds (unfortunately identical with present participles in English) nouns because they’re used like nouns (“I like cats”, “I like writing”)?

              They’re each their own class of word, neither strictly verb (despite being verb forms) nor adjective / noun (despite being used similarly) and I think we should treat them as such.

              I learned them in line with the declension of pronouns as analogues of nouns (which is generally less significant in English): I, my, me; you, your, you; he, his, him; she, her, her; it, its, it and so on. In some languages they have adjective-like declensions, but I think calling them adjectives is imprecise, because they’re more than that: They generally don’t make much sense without something they’re substituted for.

              For first and second person, that isn’t immediately obvious, but for third person, you can probably see what I mean: “Her car is rusty. Its tires are flat.”
              We can infer that “Its” refers to the car, but “Her” doesn’t tell us anything useful if we don’t know who that “She” is. That is a trait of pronouns: They’re substituted pro nomine.

              I can say “tired cat” and it is a semantically complete. “Her car” isn’t.

              Hence: I concede that they’re not purely pronouns, but rather pronouns with characteristics of adjectives. Their semantic intention is still to reference some other noun in the context, so I don’t think it’s fair to call them adjectives either.

              • mycodesucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3·
                7 days ago

                Ooh… verbals are another fun one.

                Basically, yes. A gerund IS a noun. A participle is an adjective when used as such. An infinitive is… whatever it feels like being.

                But anyway, to get to the point…

                I won’t claim that “my/his/her…” are purely adjectives, but I will make the claim that they’re as much adjectives as they are anything else.

                • luciferofastora@feddit.orgEnglish
                  1·
                  7 days ago

                  I won’t claim that “my/his/her…” are purely adjectives, but I will make the claim that they’re as much adjectives as they are anything else.

                  Fair, but in that case, when the context is fairly clearly about adjectives as opposed to pronouns, saying “Well, actually…” is just pedantic nerdery…

                  And I’m so here for it.

      • Patrikvo@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        It can be: “My day was very hertic” “That’s a very her tree”.

        No idea what it would mean. I suppose it would depend entirely on how your feel about women in general.