French Pronouns - Possessive Pronouns

Possessive Pronouns

Possessive pronouns refer to an object (or person) by identifying its possessor. They lexically indicate the person and number of the possessor, and like other pronouns they are inflected to indicate the gender and number of their referent. This is a key difference from English: in English, possessive pronouns are inflected to indicate the gender and number of their antecedent — e.g., in "the tables are his", the form "his" indicates that the antecedent (the possessor) is masculine singular, whereas in the French les tables sont les siennes, "siennes" or its base form "sien" indicates that the antecedent is third person singular but of unspecified gender while the inflection "-nes" indicates that the possessed noun "table" is feminine plural.

In French, the possessive pronouns are determined by the definite article le, la, les ("the"), depending on the gender and number of their referent; nonetheless, they are considered pronouns.

The following table lists the possessive pronouns by the possessor they indicate:

Examples:

• « C'est ta fleur ou la mienne ? » ("Is this your flower or mine?")
• « Je parle à mon frère pendant que tu parles au tien. » ("I am talking to my brother while you are talking to yours.")

Note that the term "possessive pronoun" is also sometimes applied to the possessive determiners ("my", "your", etc.), which are discussed at French articles and determiners.