The Classification of Words

You feel ill at ease when your old friend tells you that h e can't place his short stories. (Maugham).
When used in speech most of the personal pronouns (we, you, they, he) may acquire a generalizing force, as in the examples We don't kill a pig every day (proverb). У о и cannot get blood from a stone (proverb). They say she is breathtakingly beautiful. (The Times). H ё who pays the piper calls the tune (proverb).
Possessive Pronouns
§ 150. The possessive pronouns are usually treated as adjective pronouns, whereas they are in reality noun pro­nouns or pro-nouns, but they replace only possessive case nouns with which they are correlated. Cf. This is the teacher's (his, her) bicycle. This bicycle is the teacher's (his, hers).
The combinability and functions of the possessive pronouns and the 'possessive case' nouns are almost identical, which justifies the view that the pronouns in question are possessive case opposites of the personal pronouns. The only argument we can put forward against that view and in favour of the opinion that the possessive pronouns are a separate group, is as follows.
§ 151. Modern English differs from Old English and from other Modern Germanic languages in having two sets of pos­sessive pronouns — the conjoint possessive pronouns my, thy, /us, her, its, our, your, their and the absolute possessive pronouns mine, thine, hit, tiers, ours, yours, theirs.
'Possessive case' nouns, as we know (§ 97) can also be used absolutely (the idea was George's), but with them it is only a matter of usage in speech, since it is not fixed in any language forms. It is quite different with the pronouns. The pairs my — mine, thy — thine, our — ours, your — yours, etc. can be regarded as opposemes of a grammatical category. It is difficult to find a name for that category, but it resem­bles the category of case. As shown (§ 82), a case opposeme be­longs to the morphological system of the language, but it reflects speech combinability and syntactical functions The same can be «-aid about an opposeme like my — mine The difference between its members is in combinability and func-
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tion. My has right-hand connections with nouns and func­tions as an attribute. Mine has other connections and other functions in the sentence. Now if we assume that both my and mine are 'possessive case' opposites of /, we have then to speak of a case opposeme within the possessive case. There­fore, it would, probably, be more in keeping with language facts (a) to treat my (mine), tier (hers), our (ours), etc. not as the possessive case of personal pronouns but as a sub­class of pronouns; (b) to regard my — mine, lier — hers, etc. as a kind of case opposemes. It is obvious that further research is vitally necessary.
§ 152. The possessive pronouns of the first and second persons (as well as the corresponding personal pronouns) do not in fact replace any nouns, but their usage does not dif­fer from that of the third person pronouns.
The pronoun its has a much wider application than the possessive case of nouns denoting inanimate things.
Cf. The atmosphere of the room, rarely the room's atmos­phere, but its atmosphere.
Its has no 'absolute' opposite. The 'absolute' and 'con­joint' his may be regarded as homonyms.
Cf. Her (his) friend, a- friend of hers (his).
§ 153. One of the peculiarities of Modern English is the extensive use of conjoint possessive pronouns. When used in cases like He entered with h i s eyes shining and h i s hair in disorder, they add very little information. In fact their function is to specify nouns in the way the definite article does. They might be treated as pro-articles, but (a) they are correlated only with the definite article, (b) the meaning of the definite article is much more general than that of his or her.
Reflexive Pronouns