Possessive Determiner - Semantics

Semantics

For possessive adjectives as elsewhere, the genitive does not always indicate strict possession, but rather a general sense of belonging or close identification with. Consider the following examples:

• my mother or my people

Here, a person does not own his or her mother, but rather has a close relationship with her. The same applies to my people, which means people I am closely associated with or people I identify with.

• his train (as in "If Bob doesn't get to the station in ten minutes he's going to miss his train")

Here, Bob most likely does not own the train and instead his train means the train Bob plans to travel on.

• my CD (as in "The kids are enjoying my CD")

my CD could refer to a CD that I own, a CD owned by someone else but with music that I recorded as an artist, a CD that I have just given to someone here as a gift, or one with some other relation to me that would be identifiable in the context.