POSSESSIVE

ADJECTIVES
What is a possessive 
adjective?
•A possessive adjective is an adjective that
modifies a noun by identifying who has
ownership or possession of it. For example, in
the sentence Andrew lost his keys the
word his is a possessive adjective that indicates
the keys belong to Andrew. The most commonly
used possessive adjectives are my, your, his,
her, its, our, their, and whose. In order, these
adjectives correspond to the pronouns I, you, he,
she, it, we, they, and who.
•As their name suggests, possessive
adjectives are often used to express
possession or ownership. For example, the
sentence Gregory put his hat on the
table uses the adjective his to express the
idea that Greg owns the hat. We can also
use possessive adjectives to refer to
figurative things that someone has, as
in Ally described her dream to me.
• Possessive adjectives are also used to
refer to people who have a relation to
someone or something. For example,
the sentence Vince and Helena are
with their parents uses the possessive
adjective their to express that the
parents are related to Vince and Helena;
they don’t “own” their parents, but their
parents are something they have.
• When deciding which possessive
adjective to use, you need to figure out
which pronoun you would use to identify
the same person or thing that owns or
has the noun you are modifying. For
example,
• The mother bird was building ____ nest.
•In this sentence, we want to
modify nest with a possessive adjective.
The nest belongs to the mother bird.
Because the bird is female, we would
use the pronoun she. The possessive
adjective used with she is her. So, our
sentence should read:
•The mother bird was building her nest.