possessive case

Shows who owns

The possessive case is the form of a noun or pronoun showing ownership or association: the dog's collar, her keys, the company's policy.

English typically marks possessive nouns with an apostrophe and s, while pronouns have distinct possessive forms: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.

The possessive also indicates other relationships beyond strict ownership: a day's work, the city's mayor.

grammatical

genitive

Case expressing ownership

apostropheMark showing ownership
inflectionWord form alteration
declensionNoun form variation

morphology · noun modifier · clitic · enclitic

pronouns

mine

Ore excavation site

yoursPossessive for addressee
hisMale possessive pronoun
hersFemale possessive pronoun

its · ours · theirs · whose · my · your · her · our · their · pronominal

semantics

ownership

Legal right of possession

belongingState of fitting in
alienableMay be transferred legally
inalienableIncapable of being surrendered

body parts · part-whole · association · authorship · origin · source · patient

syntax

noun phrase

Multi-word noun construction

dependencyState of needing support
modificationAct of altering something
prepositional phraseWords starting with preposition

attributive · complement · specifier · periphrastic · word order

possessive case

genitive

mine

ownership

noun phrase

possessive case

Categories

Family