Stumbling over simple pronouns. Help!

[Colleen]

Here we are in the midst of Rod & Staff English 3 and I find myself stymied by simple pronouns. I can't explain to my son (or to myself either, for that matter) the use of possessive pronouns as adjectives. Examples:

1) "This is my Father's world." (I originally said there were two pronouns: "this" and "my". According to the Teacher's Manual, I'm wrong on the second count.)

2) "Christ our God, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise." (Here, I thought both "ours" were pronouns, but apparently not.)

Would these be considered adjectives, then? This should be simple. Or not? I'm really curious about this now!

Thanks,
Colleen

[Ruth]

I learned them as possessive pronoun adjectives. So they would be both pronouns and adjectives, but primarily adjectives.

This is one of those areas where different grammar programs will label word functions differently. I find it confusing, too. Thanks for the heads up on this as we are using Rod and Staff next year.

[Tracy Gustilo]

Interesting question!

Here is one of those cases where "parts of speech only" grammar falls down flat. We need to consider syntax in this case.

First of all, remember the definition. A pronoun IS a word that stands in for a noun. So even when it is used to show possession, it IS a pronoun:

John's dog = his dog (his stands in for 'John's')

But we must also consider the syntax. First, we have to consider case. Cases are syntactical in that they show function and relation within the sentence. The personal pronouns (called so because they come in three "persons", first, second, and third) have three cases in English:

nominative (for subjects and "predicate nominatives")
objective (for objects) -- in Latin there are 3 cases
possessive (for showing possession) -- in Latin genitive

Here the pronoun is in possessive case.

Second, still in the realm of syntax, we have to consider the function of the pronoun in the sentence. In the case of possessive pronouns, they are "modifying" something. Which dog? John's dog. His dog. They are telling "which one", an "adjective" question. (Adjectives answer the questions: which one, what kind, how many, etc.) This means that the word is fulfilling the role of an adjective in the sentence. We might say that their function is "adjectival".

Other parts of speech do this, too. Nouns do it:

fire department, desk pad, August sale

Prepositional phrases do it:

the dog of John (which dog?)

Verbs do it (as participles):

the yowling dog

So there is no clean break here, between what a word IS and what it DOES in the sentence. Or, if we look at it another way, the word itself really points in two directions at the same time. It points to its own meaning, what it stands for in and of itself, and it points to the other word(s) that are being affected by it, and the effect it has in acting upon them.

The eight parts of speech as a classification system is highly useful, but it is not entirely neat and tidy. (Logicians and rhetoricians would have some problems with its technique of "division".) To be effective it must always be applied in conjunction with a consideration of context and syntax.

In short, the words you are looking at are both pronouns (because they stand in for nouns) and adjectives (because they modify nouns).

HTH,
Tracy

P.S. It is useful to consider the definitions of the eight parts of speech and how they "work". Some of the definitions point to something outside language altogether. I.e. they point to real things in the world:

A noun is (the name of) a person, place, thing or idea.
A verb is a word that shows action, being or state.
An interjection is a word used to express some sudden or strong emotion.

Some definitions point to something outside the immediate context (maybe even outside the sentence itself):

A pronoun is a word that stands in for a noun.

(The noun the pronoun stands in for is called the "antecedent". In written English it will have been stated previously, sometimes in the same sentence, but often in a previous sentence.)

And some definitions point primarily to a functional role played within the immediate context or sentence itself. These words also have meaning in and of themselves, but as far as the definition goes, these "outside" meanings (what the word indicates "in the real world") are less important than the syntactical function. The functional or relational role played by these words in the sentence between words is the stronger definitional "pull". Notice how these four definitions (as with pronouns above) are defined in terms of *other parts of speech* or other *words*.

An adjective is a word used to describe or define a noun.
An adverb is a word used to modify the meaning of a verb, adjective, or another adverb.
A preposition is a word used to show the relation between its object and some other word.
A conjunction is a word used to connect words, sentences, and parts of sentences.

Compare. What if we defined a 'noun' as:

A word that can serve as the subject of a sentence.

Or,

A word that is modified by adjectives.

<?!> :-)

[Colleen]

Thank you, Ruth and Tracy, for responding. Tracy, your point is well taken regarding the limitations of dissecting sentences with an eye toward parts of speech only. In fact, things are often not as simple as they seem at face value. Which is why, as I attempt to explain things to my poor 7 year old, I often end up in a muttered conversation with myself - changing my mind in mid-sentence; flipping through Harvey's; returning to my first, intuitive guess at an answer yet reserving my right to change my mind - all with an eye on the clock, of course, as other subjects (and children!) are close at hand. Good grief, if I become this sidetracked with pronouns in Rod & Staff 3, what will become of me years down the road?!?!

By the way, regarding the examples I cited in my original post, the R&S teacher's manual did note, "Possessive pronouns used as adjectives are acceptable for some answers." I probably wasn't supposed to give it so much thought.

Cheers,
Colleen