Possessive

A possessive form, in linguistics, is a word or construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense.

Possessive forms that occur with a noun and indicate the possessor of the referent of that noun, thus serving as determiners or adjectives, are called possessive determiners or possessive adjectives (see Terminology below). Examples include the English words my and Jane's as used in the phrases my friends and Jane's work. An equivalent means used in some languages is the possessive affix, usually a suffix, added to a noun to indicate the possessor, as in the Finnish taloni "my house", from talo "house".

Possessive forms that indicate the possessor of something but occur independently, without qualifying a noun, are called possessive pronouns. Examples in English include the words mine and yours as in mine is red and I prefer yours. Forms such as Jane's in I prefer Jane's perform the same function, though they are more rarely described as possessive pronouns, being derived from nouns.

Nouns or pronouns taking the form of a possessive are sometimes described as being in the possessive case, although the description of possessives as constituting a grammatical case in languages like English is often disputed. A more commonly used term in describing the grammar of various languages is genitive case, though this usually denotes a case with a broader range of functions than just producing possessive forms. Some languages, such as the Cariban languages, can be said to have a possessed case, used to indicate the other party (the thing possessed) in a possession relationship. Some languages occasionally use the dative case, as in the Serbo-Croatian Kosa mu je gusta "His hair is thick" (lit. "Hair he-DAT is thick").

The glossing abbreviation POS or POSS may be used to indicate possessive forms.