Redwolf wrote:
You actually used the term in your sentence above, a Chaoimhín! "Mine" is a possessive pronoun, which means it takes the place of a noun. You may have confused the term with "possessive adjective" (my, your, his, her)...a lot of people do, especially because sometimes the possessive pronoun and the possessive adjectives are the same in English:
The reason people get them confused is that the standard terminology isn't really appropriate to English. I wrote a couple of rambling blog posts years ago about this, but I can't be bothered looking up links right now.
Basically, "my" etc, though often termed "adjectives" are nothing of the sort. "My" goes in the same grammatical slot as "the" or "a", just like "mo" in Irish. That makes it a "possessive determiner", and some places are now using that term instead. The reason people try to call it a "pronoun" is simply because it
also sits in the same slot as possessive nouns -- "Niall's flat" -> "my flat" -> "the flat". As this is pretty much every English speaker's first intuition before being taught the traditional way of doing it, I can't call it wrong.
As for "mine"... well, there's not really a simple answer. It sometimes acts as a pronoun ( eg mine is red ) but t also acts a bit adjective-like ( she will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine ).
This irrelevant terminological tangent was brought to you courtesy of a flat with no TV and an internet link unsuitable for streaming.
(I'm bored.)
Quote:
Irish lacks the possessive pronoun, which is why we have to resort to "Is liomsa é" or "mo cheann"
Isn't there an Irish equivalent to the English "one" used pronominaly? In ScG we've got "an fear agam"/"an tè agam" and "m' fhear-sa"/"mo thè-sa", but I don't suppose they'd be much use here anyway as both would end up taking on their literal meaning of man and woman.