What Is a Possessive Adjective?

What's wrong with this sentence?

Problem:   We usually go out with ours friends.

What's wrong with this sentence?

Problem:   Married people have to support they family and raise they children.

In English, we use possessives to indicate ownership or a relationship with qualities of ownership.

Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives may all show possession.

In this unit, we discuss possessive adjectives.

The bolded words in the chart below are the possessive adjectives, and we are using the noun friend(s) for the noun position in these examples:

SINGULAR PLURAL

my friends(s) our friends(s)
your friends(s) your friends(s)
her, his, its friends(s) their friends(s)


Problem: We usually go out with ours friends.
Solution:  We usually go out with our friends.

Problem: Married people have to support they family and raise they children.
Solution: Married people have to support their family and raise their children.

Here are some additional examples of possessive adjectives in complete sentences:

  1. He and his wife always have something going on in their home on Friday nights.

  2. But our rolls and our life together changed when we arrived in the United States.

  3. A country has to make its citizens feel secure.

  4. Furthermore, no matter how good parents are, their children can create trouble.

  5. People who get married have to remember how to support their family, how to raise their children, and how to keep their love alive.

Next...

In our next lesson, we look at Demonstrative Adjectives.

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