This very interesting grammar question was posted in the Forum sometime ago by Russia-based member John Johnson, who later confirmed he was in fact a Russian using that American name pseudonymously but in good faith: “There is no doubt that ‘mine’ is a pronoun in ‘She is an old acquaintance of
mine.’ But I am not so sure for ‘This table is
mine.’ Is it a pronoun or adjective/determiner?”
My reply to John:Take a look at the chart below comparing the functions of “my” and “mine”:
You’re definitely right that “mine” functions as a
pronoun in “She is an old acquaintance of
mine.” It means “that which belongs to me,” and has the same meaning as the adjective “my” when used with a noun that follows it, as in “She is
my old acquaintance.”
In “This table is
mine,” however, “mine” works not as a pronoun but as the
possessive case of “I” functioning as a
predicate adjective that modifies the subject of the sentence. In that particular sentence, the subject is “this table” and the predicate adjective is “mine,” which is connected to the subject by the linking verb “is.”
You also asked whether the word “mine” is a
determiner in “The table is
mine.” The answer is no. But “mine” used to have a special function as a determiner that’s now considered archaic. In poetry, it can substitute for “my” before a word that begins with a vowel or a silent “h,” as in these two lines from Sir Philip Sidney’s “Sonnets from Astrophel and Stella”:
Let not mine eyes be hell-driven from that light / O look, O shine, O let me die and see.THE SIX KINDS OF DETERMINERS IN ENGLISH:
Other than this limited use, a determiner is normally positioned at the beginning of the noun phrase to indicate whether it’s being used in a specific or general sense.
A
specific determiner is used when the speaker or writer believes that the listener or reader knows exactly what’s being referred to. The specific determiners are the
definite article “the”; the
possessives “my,” “your,” “his,” “her,” “its,” “our,” “their,” and “whose”; the
demonstratives “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those”; and the interrogative “which.”
On the other hand, a
general determiner is used when the speaker or writer is talking about things in general and the listener or reader doesn’t know exactly what’s being referred to. The general determiners are “a,” “an,” “any,” “another,” “other,” and “what.”
***
Reader Eddie de Leon posted this response to last week’s column, “Wrong or willfully violated mall parking signs in English”:
“Why do you use the word ‘signage’ instead of ‘sign’? The
American Heritage Dictionary defines ‘signage’ as 1. ‘Signs considered as a group. 2. The design or use of signs and symbols.’ I suspect you have agreed to follow the anti-plain and simple affectation of ignorant people who have finished college courses in design, or even architecture, where pretentious professors use jargon like “signage” improperly.”
My reply to Eddie:In the communication industry, a clear distinction is made between “signs” and “signages.” A
sign is generally any natural or informal indication that can be perceived by the senses or the reason, like dark clouds before rain or the remarkably sudden receding of the shoreline before a tsunami; on the other hand,
signage is a formal system of identification, warning, or direction, like the usual parking billboards that I talked about and the more complex corporate identity systems developed by modern-day companies.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TERMS “SIGN” AND “SIGNAGE”: LEFT, SIGN OF
EXPECTED STORMY WEATHER; RIGHT, CORPORATE SIGNAGE FOR BULDING
I therefore beg to disagree with you that the usage of the word “signage” instead of “sign” is jargon, or “the anti-plain and simple affectation of ignorant people who have finished college courses in design.” On the contrary, it is the use of more precise, discerning language to denote a particular, much more specific use of symbolism to communicate things and ideas. I do think that for clarity’s sake, there’s a need for this more exacting word rather than the one you have in mind for plain, simple talk.
This essay, 905th in the series, first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the August 30, 2014 issue of The Manila Times
, © 2014 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
