6. Possessive determiners

Possessive determiners say who something belongs to, or who owns something.

Example:

Is this your bag?
No, my bag is green.

English has two forms of the possessive:

  • my – mine
  • your – yours
  • his – his
  • her – hers
  • its – its
  • our – ours
  • your – yours
  • their – theirs

We use the short form (my, your, our etc.) in front of the noun they belong to, and the long form (mine, yours, ours) when they stand alone.

NB: there are no apostrophes in these words.

Example:

This is their house.
This house is theirs.

See if you can choose the correct alternatives here:

I wonder if Jill took bag by mistake when she left.

bag is here, and I can’t see anywhere.

I’m not sure Jill has left. That is bike, isn’t it? I think it’s , anyway.

OK, so car is bigger than , but at least car is cleaner than .

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