“my” vs. “mine” in multiple owner possessive

@annp

Yes, indeed. This is dubbed, if I recall, the "fused particle" construction and may be the way I would express it in speech. In fact, I might refer to "the children", rather than "our children", given that one of the children was not mine.

@annp - it is indeed what Fowler called the fused participle, but whether you use a possessive with it or not is purely a matter of formality. In object position, in informal language, object pronouns are fine.

@ Warsaw Will - What about "I so appreciate you taking me and Gregg's child to school today"?
Now, I know that at first sight, it seems wrong - the "me" could come across as a 'dangling object', as if the addressee were taking two people to school: the speaker, and Gregg's child.
However, in speech, one would say, "Jack said Romeo and Juliet's love was eternal". It wouldn't be "Jack said Romeo's and Juliet's love was eternal". So, if we transfer this rule onto the original sentence, could it not be "me and Gregg's child", which sounds more natural despite risking the intrusion of a 'dangling object'?
(I am aware that in speaking, no-one would actually phrase it like this. But for the purpose of argument, let's say we had to, and we had to make it grammatically correct.)

@ArjSaj - I take your point about Romeo and Juliet's love where we only need one possessive noun when two people have joint possession of something, but I don't think it works for pronouns. Would you say 'this is me and Jenny's bedroom' or 'that's him and her house'? I think not. So I would suggest it's the same with 'me and Gregg's child'. And as you say, it could be rather confusing.

Try reversing it, because actually I would say 'this is Jenny's and my bedroom' or 'this is Gregg's and my child' (if I'm the mother). But in standard English, at least, 'this is Jenny's and me bedroom' or 'this is Gregg's and me child' wouldn't work, although 'Juliet and Romeo's love' does. So I'm afraid I don't think you can necessarily extrapolate pronoun behaviour from the way nouns work.

@Syed Usman - " 'My' is not a possessive pronoun, 'My' is a determiner and 'Mine' is a possessive pronoun." Were it only so easy!

In EFL, we certainly refer to "my" etc as determiners and "mine" as possessive pronouns in the way you do, as do most British dictionaries, especially learner's dictionaries and grammar books aimed at foreign learners. And for me this is certainly the system that makes most sense - a pronoun standing in for a noun and a determiner referencing a noun..

In nineteenth century grammar, and earlier, however, "my" etc were indeed categorised as (dependent) possessive pronouns, while "mine" etc were classed as independent possessive pronouns.

Then some grammarians started classing "my" etc as possessive adjectives, an idea that prevailed until the idea of determiners was born, fairly recently. And you will still see "my" etc referred to as possessive adjectives on many grammar websites.

But then to complicate things, a newer generation of theoretical reference grammars have gone back to classing them as possessive pronouns. The highly influential Comprehensive Grammar of the English Grammar, by Quirk, Greenbaum et al (1985) has a word class (part of speech) - determiners (articles, "this" etc) - which have a "determinative" function. But for them, "my" etc are not determiners, but are listed as possessive pronouns with a determinative function, while "mine" etc are listed as personal pronouns with an independent function.

To further complicate matters, the latest reference grammar, the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, by Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey Pullum et al (2002), reverses the role of the words determiner and determinative, so that "determinative" is now the word class and "determiner" the function. But they also exclude "my" etc from this word class, and list them as possessive pronouns having a determiner function.

To summarise, you and I, the EFL world and the main British dictionaries refer to "my" etc as determiners. Many ESL websites refer to "my" etc as possessive adjectives, while both the earliest prescriptivist grammars and the latest descriptivist reference grammars refer to "my" etc as possessive pronouns, having a determinative or determiner function, depending on whether you favour Quirk and Greenbaum or Huddleston and Pullum.

So it looks as though everybody's right.

Having said all that, I agree with your basic analysis.

From a sheer ESOL standpoint, the less terminology the better: 'my' is an adjective and needs a following noun. "Mine" doesn't need a following noun. KISS.
A 'determiner' is someone who determines something..... ;0}}

You good people may wish to also consider the by-no-means-uncommon use of the phrase/interjection in British English speech of "my, my" or "my-my" (there are over 5,000,000 google references to the phrase!). There is a Ringo Starr song called 'Oh, my-my" and there is one by Taylor Swift:

"Mary's Song (Oh My My My)"

She said, I was seven and you were nine
I looked at you like the stars that shined
In the sky, the pretty lights
And our daddies used to joke about the two of us
Growing up and falling in love and our mamas smiled
And rolled their eyes and said oh my my my

Take me back to the house in the backyard tree
Said you'd beat me up, you were bigger than me
You never did, you never did
Take me back when our world was one block wide
I dared you to kiss me and ran when you tried
Just two kids, you and I...
Oh my my my my

@jayles - I agree with you about terminology when teaching foreign learners, but this is a language forum, where we should be able to discuss these things. And then you yourself use a piece of terminology - adjective (both adjectives and determiners are word classes in EFL and much of ESL) - one which is almost never used to categorise "my" in EFL.

To me an adjective tells us something about the inherent quality of something, which "my" does not. If you and I both have fast red Italian sports cars, fast, red and Italian tell us something about the nature of the cars - "my" and "your" tell us nothing about the nature of the cars, simply whose or which they are. So it seems logical to me to class them with other determiners such as articles, demonstratives and interrogatives.

The second problem about calling them adjectives is that if students look them up in a dictionary or modern grammar book (apart from those monster reference books I mentioned, they will be referred to as determiners. I quite agree about K.I.S.S. so I use the same term students will find elsewhere.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/my

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/determiners-and-quantifiers (EFL)

http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/grammar-lesson-determiners.php#.UqdpkScudm0 (ESL/EFL)

Here's one site that does treat them as adjectives, though:
http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/sample/beginner/gs/gs_40.htm (adjectives)

Good discussion about the change from adjective to determiner at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determiner

@WW perhaps I just meant "like an adjective" or "works like an adjective". One should remember that in Mandarin some "adjectives" work like verbs ; a bit like brown in ;
"brown bread", "the pies brown under the grill"; so sometimes even basic terminology doesn't get one far.

@jayles - I do agree with you about keeping terminology to a minimum in lessons, and I grant you that students are much likely to know what adjectives are than determiners. And to use your analogy, we also often use nouns as adjectives.

In fact, I think I just refer to "my"etc as possessives if the need arises, which isn't that often (they don't seem to cause many problems for Polish learners, at least). But course books occasionally refer to determiners, so I have to be able to explain them.

The point I was making to Syed Usman was that it's dangerous to talk in absolutes in language. Just because his language community and mine refer to "my" etc as determiners and "mine" etc as "possessive pronouns" it doesn't mean that someone else referring to "my" etc as possessive pronouns is necessarily wrong. That's no doubt how many linguists refer to them, for example.

I learnt this the hard way. I had just written a post for my blog on determiners and pronouns, when I saw a rather (unfairly in my view) poor review of an EFL grammar book on a blog with a distinctly linguistics slant. One of the reviewer's complaints was that the book referred to "my" etc as determiners, when they were in fact (in his opinion) pronouns. When I dared to comment that this was absolutely standard in EFL, he quoted Huddleston and Pullum at me, and I was given a lecture about "determinatives" (which I had never heard of - neither I think, have many people).

As I was rather worried I'd got it all wrong in my blog post, I did some investigating into the whole determiner / determinative thing (it's a bit of a mess), hence my mention of those two reference books. But I have one strong principle on my blog, which is that I use the mainstream terminology of EFL, so I'm sticking with the standard EFL and dictionary definition of determiner I'd already used, and leaving the weird and wonderful stuff to the linguists..

@WW I agree. If anyone asked what a determiner is, I'd just give them a list.
BTW in Hungarian, possession is done with noun endings not separate words.

No matter how I look at it, 'Mine and Greg's' seems to be correct. Whenever I have a problem like this, I always break down the sentence into parts.

First, you have the object, which is the 'child.' And then you have the two possessors, 'Greg,' and the pronoun for 'yourself.' Depending on which person you're writing in, the difficulty of this operation varies. First person is awful with compound possessives!

Take the sentence and break it down to just the object in relation to each separate possessor.

"The child is Greg's."

And, since it's first person, and the child belongs to 'you'--

"The child is mine."

Therefore: “I so appreciate you taking mine and Gregg’s child to school today.”

I dub thee correct.

Take it with a grain of salt; my ultra-super-cool qualifications lie within the many treacherous and unedited territories of Fanfiction; I wouldn't be surprised if I was looking at this completely backwards!

Also, when in doubt, try saying the sentence out loud. 'My and Greg's child' vs 'Mine and Greg's child'--which one sounds better? You know which one I'd go with. Just sayin'.

Does the sentence refer to one child or two children?

@HS - and there lies part of the problem: it's ambiguous independent of whether we use 'my' or 'mine'. (I see that in my first comment I had assumed they were talking of one child,but on second glance I might well think two were being referred to.

What's more it seems to me unnatural for reasons I mentioned earlier. The person had already taken the child/children to school, so presumably knew their name(s) - so why not just use their names instead of this somewhat awkward construction?

Incidentally I can't agree with Ashley:) - as far as I know, we virtually never use possessive pronouns before the person or thing has been mentioned (except perhaps in book titles). "Greg's child and mine" might just work, if there two children, or more, but "Mine and Greg's child"? I think not.

This is largely because it's mixing two different grammatical forms. The original sentence was "My/mine and Gregg's child", but Ashley:) has broken this down to "The child is Greg's", which is grammatically completely different.

"My" is a possessive determiner (or possessive adjective, if you prefer), whereas "mine" is a possessive pronoun. When we use a possessive noun before another noun it also acts as a determiner - "Sandra's new car" = "Her new car", not "hers new car" (which is ungrammatical). And when we use it after the verb "be", as in "This car is Sandra's", it is a possessive pronoun. And I'm afraid that Ashley:) is confusing these two forms.

So we can say "David and Sandra's new car" or at a pinch "David's and her new car", but certainly not "David's and and hers new car", or "Hers and David's new car" - they are simply ungrammatical. And I can't see how "Mine and Greg's child" is any different

Sure enough if you sustitute me for Greg in "The child is Greg's", you get "mine",but if you do the same with the original "Greg's child", you get "my child". So by Ashley:) 's own substitution rule it should be "my", And preferably "Greg's and my child". Which I would take to mean "our child", but ambuguity still remains.

The grammatically and syntactically proper way to form this is: "I [do so] appreciate your taking the child of Gregg and mine to school today".

Tho me thinks sumthin ain't quite right soundin with them their wordins u no wut I mean?

Now mine and my sons glasses are going to cost me a little over $400

When saying two things are ready for pickup... is this correct
Your and your sons tax returns are ready for pickup

A Facebook reader complained that another commenter was incorrect to use the term “My Walmart” while speaking about the Walmart in closest proximity to her home. I do this all the time. Are we both incorrect to use the word “my” in this way, because we do not own the walmart as he points out, or is he just being a grammar prude? .

Why not just say.. my blabla, as well as my son’s will cost over $400.

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Ok, skimmed through the comments but still stuck on my question. My father and I share the same birthday. Lucky us. So, what's the proper way to say "mine and my dad's birthday is today" which sounds more natural to me than "my dad's and my birthday is today". I see the argument in not wanting to start with yourself but it certainly rolls off the tongue better, in my opinion.

That's right, the words are used in different contexts. I understand that at first, it will be difficult to understand and get used to, but this is English. such a language. When I started teaching him, I often used https://writix.co.uk/essay-examples/management to do written homework. I could just pick a topic like management and find lots of essay examples on management and tips on how to properly manage your project to read. I recommend that you also use such resources while you are actively learning the language.

The best solution may be to avoid the awkward use of my/mine:

"Greg and I so appreciate you taking our child to school today."

Well, first, the sentence needs to be grammatically correct in that you would put Gregg first. As a general rule, "me" comes last. It's not I and Gregg, it's Greg and I....so first it would be “I so appreciate you taking Gregg and ___ child to school today.”
That being said, in this sentence, it should be "mine's".

“I so appreciate you taking Gregg and mine's child to school today.”

Mine is used for a possessive pronoun (your child) and my is for a possessive adjective.
You could also always say "Gregg and I so appreciate you taking our child to school today."

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I so appreciate you taking my child and Gregg's to school today."

Alternatively, if you replace "my child" with "mine," the sentence would be:

"I so appreciate you taking mine and Gregg's child to school today."

Both versions are grammatically correct, but the choice between them may depend on personal preference or the flow of the surrounding text.
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I so appreciate you taking my child and Gregg's to school today."

Alternatively, if you replace "my child" with "mine," the sentence would be:

"I so appreciate you taking mine and Gregg's child to school today."

Both versions are grammatically correct, but the choice between them may depend on personal preference or the flow of the surrounding text.
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