Post edited 11:12AM – Aug-21-10 by Bob Bridges

Ok, I think it's past time to show my ignorance. I've been using the term pronoun to refer to all the following words:
> I, thou, he, she, it, we, you, they
> My, thy/thine, his, her, its, our, your, their
> Me, thee, him, her, it, us, you, them

…but also
> Mine, thine, his, hers, ours, yours, theirs

Am I supposed to use a different word for that last set? Or are all of them pronouns but there's a term to further distinguish them? Anybody know?

Let me get even more explicit: Are both "my" and "mine" possessive pronouns? Or is "mine" something else?

Post edited 9:38PM – Aug-21-10 by tunawrites

All of those words are pronouns, but if you want to sound grammar-nerdy (and, really, who on this message board doesn't?) when you talk about them, Bob Bridges, there are three different names for these different pronoun groups:

"> I, thou, he, she, it, we, you, they" are nominative-case pronouns (or, probably more correct, pronouns in the nominative case);
"> My, thy/thine, his, her, its, our, your, their" are possessive pronouns;
"> Me, thee, him, her, it, us, you, them" are objective-case pronouns; and
"> Mine, thine, his, hers, ours, yours, theirs" are possessive pronouns.

However, I have seen the group my, your, his, her, its, our, and their called possessive adjectives, rather than possessive pronouns, likely because of the position of each directly before a noun. I've also found that distinction useful in the past for teaching English to speakers of other languages, since the Latin languages have similar usages. It's easier to keep separate the different usages of the words my and mine to Spanish-speakers by comparing each to the Spanish equivalent — for example, "este es mi cacahuete" ("this is my peanut") and "este cacahuete es mio" ("this peanut is mine"). (I'm not sure how to make accent marks on this board, so my examples are missing a couple — over the initial "e" in "este" and the "i" in "mio"; also, I used the Spanish word for "peanut" because "cacahuete" is one of the most fun words to say in any language.)

Funny how Spanish shares with English the little quirk of using the same word for both meanings of "this" in tunawrites's two peanut sentences. In Japanese, they'd be:

Kore wa watashi no tawara desu. ("This is my peanut")
Kono tawara wa watashi no desu. ("This peanut is mine")

Bob Bridges said:

Yeah, "cacahuete" is a trip, isn't it, for some reason? It's a new-world word, of course; it never came from Spanish or Arabic, must be something from Aztec, Incan or some such.

I would guess it's of Aztec origin, since it has the same kind of sound as Teotihucan (also very fun to say) and, most tellingly, the native word for Aztec, Nahuahl. (Other Aztec names that are fun to say: Huitzilopochtli, the creation god, and Tenochitlan, the Aztec capital city.)

On a note that gets away from the subject of the original post, what are other fun-sounding words in foreign languages? I only know a little bit of French, a little bit of Italian, and a lot of Spanish, so I'm not well-versed outside the Romance languages. I submit "catarata", which means "waterfall" in Spanish. It has some appealing snare-drum rhythm to it, and it's beautifully onomatopoetic for small waterfalls.

Post edited 1:57AM – Aug-22-10 by Bob Bridges

"Kamehameha" isn't bad. I'm with you on "nahuatl" and (for different reasons) "Tenochtitlan". As a Minnesotan I've always been partial to Dakota place names such as "Kabetogama", and "Muskegon" and Maine's "Mooselukmeguntik" make me happy, too.

Not all my favorite words are polysyllabic, but really I don't know why some words seem more fun to say than others. I like "saga" and "limpid"; I dislike "aggregate" and "conglomeration". "Algorithm" isn't bad, and "al-Jezira" is pleasant (sorry), and I'm partial to "Hlath", but I don't care for "chordata" or "muskellunge". I don't think it has much to do with connotations: "Cholera" and "deadly" fall trippingly off the tongue while "jaunt" and "Vulcan" don't. Oh, and "Laramie" is nice too. Guess it's past time for me to go to bed.

Post edited 12:14PM – Aug-22-10 by Bob Bridges

Showing my prejudices, here, but I'd rather get my insight from the Jerusalem Post. Still, I do read both from time to time; I just tend to believe the JP more than al-Jazeera. And of course each of them print stories that I won't find in the other.

It's even worse, at least in English, with "that", which can be not only an adjective ("that batter hit a home run") and a pronoun ("sure, I believe that") but also a relative pronoun ("the home run that he hit") and a … actually, I'm not sure what you call this one, but "that" can turn a sentence into a noun. "He's hit a home run" -> "I believe that he's hit a home run", "That he's hit a home run is big news here in Greensboro", "Would you rather that he hit home run or that he struck out?". It's not exactly a conjunction, in that case. What would you call it?

Post edited 2:29PM – Sep-18-10 by Bob Bridges

This is the sort of distinction I was looking for, and yet I'm not satisfied yet. I'm comparing it, perhaps mistakenly, to classical Greek, where they have four cases not three. Well, technically five, but the vocative is hardly ever used:

• Nominative: ἐγώ ("I", used as the subject of the verb, as in "I killed him.")
• Genetive: μοῦ ("My", "of me", "from me", used as possessive and with prepositions in motion away from, eg "He killed my dog" and "He came as a messenger from me".)
• Dative: ἐμοί ("To me", used as indirect object and with prepositions such as "at", eg "He gave it to me" and "He's standing right by me.")
• Accusative: ἐμέ ("Me", used as direct object and with prepositions in motion toward, eg "He killed me" and "he's coming toward me".)

I said "perhaps mistakenly" because it could be it isn't parallel: μοῦ means "of me" just as much as it does "my". But my tidy soul keeps looking for a parallel, nonetheless, and because of that I think of "my" being a pronoun, alright, just not the same kind of pronoun … something with a longer, fancier name, like the difference between an interrogative and a relative pronoun.[After rereading:] Wait a minute: I think I mixed some forms there. Maybe μου, μοι and με (unaccented) are just particles, and ἐμοῦ, ἐμοί and ἐμέ are the true pronouns. It's been a few years, after all.

Well, I wouldn't exactly disagree with you: In Greek the genitive does things that the English possessive doesn't. But I don't think it's true that our possessive does only possession. We call it "possessive", but really it's the relationship thingy you spoke of in the other thread. No one thinks, when I say "my country", that I think I own it. Nor, for that matter, my ancestors, my death or my alma mater.