Possessive pronoun v. possessive adjective

[buddhabelly]

I seem to recall a discussion recently on this board about this grammar topic, and particularly what MCT teaches. Forgive me if I am wrong, since I read the thread very late at night before a long trip.

 

But just in case you were discussing it, and just in case it was not resolved, I ran into this exact thing on p. 197 of the Paragraph Town TM. It is not in the student book.

 

The sentence in question is:

 

Oh, Fishmeal eventually gave flapping his wings a try.

 

Discussion (in part):

In this sentence flapping is a gerund, a noun. Why can it not be a verb? It is not in a tense. The real verb is gave, which is in past tense. Why is his an adjective and not a pronoun? The possessive adjectives are a different list than the possessive pronouns, even though they look like pronouns. Think about the difference between my wing is gray and mine is gray.

 

Again, forgive me if this was not the actual topic under discussion and just let this drop into the murky depths to which threads of no interest descend.

 

Julie

Edited March 4, 2010 by buddhabelly

[Capt_Uhura]

OH yes we had a rather lengthy discussion about this in a long thread....perhaps the "is MCT only for gifted children" thread.

 

Yes MCT has switched camps. He is now in the camp that personal pronouns are of two flavors: personal pronouns (mine, his, hers, ours, theirs, yours) and possessive adjectives (pronouns acting as adjectives) (my, his, her, our, their, your).

 

Here is the sentence that is in Practice Island.

 

Hers is blue and matches her eyes.

 

Hers is listed as a pronoun and her is listed as a poss. adjective.

 

Both of my boys listed her as an adjective and hers as a pronoun so it intuitively made sense to them to split the two groups.

 

I looked in a high school grammar text and that author acknowledged the two camps, said to follow whatever your teacher said, but he was staying in the camp of listed both groups always as pronouns.

 

For me, I naturally thought of them as separate. If I want to say "The book is mine" I want a pronoun. Or I could say, "That is my book." In that case, my is answering the adjective question "whose." I look more at function of a word rather than an absolute label.

 

Capt_Uhura

[buddhabelly]

See, I don't see how "mine" could ever be anything but a (pro)noun. If I give it the adjective test -- "Have you seen mine book recently?" --- it fails miserably. Whereas this sentence -- "The book is mine" is clearly in the form of subject, linking verb, predicate nominative.

 

But perhaps there are weightier subjects we might be discussing, such as whether we have asbestos in our attic (vermiculite) and whether this will cause our house sale to fail.

 

Off-topic!

 

Cheers,

 

Julie

[Spy Car]

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