# Norwegian-bokmål: possessive pronouns



## 涼宮

Good evening everyone.


Could you give me the genitive of possesive pronouns and the possesive of 'it? because the dictionary does not help me. 
I mean:

she>her>hers
he>his>his
they>their>theirs

I am not sure if perhaps the possessives work as genitive as well.

Dette er hennes (this is hers)[?]

And specially I would like to know the possessive of ''it'' in neuter, feminine, masculine, plural and its accusative if you do not mind.


Thak you very much in Advance.


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## Tjahzi

So, what you are asking for is the third person inanimate pronouns? If so, here you go:

Nom/acc/gen

den/den/dens - singular, m/f
det/det/dets - singular, n
de/dem/deres - plural, all genders

Since your question is somewhat ambiguous, I'll add the animate pronouns just in case:

han/ham/hans
hun/henne/hennes

And the plural is the same for all genders, independent of animacy.


Also, keep in mind that _min_, _din_ and _vår _are true possessive pronouns and hence conjugated as adjectives whereas the other forms are grammaticalized genitives that don't conjugate according to the nouns.


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## louisjanus

And the *reflexive* possessive (only form is for 3rd person) is

_sin, si, sitt, sine_

You use it if the subject 'owns' the object. I usually give the humorous example to my students:

1] han kysser kona hans (someone else's wife)
2] han kysser kona si (his own wife)

In 1], the object is owned by someone other than the subject.
In 2], the subject _han_ owns the object (his own)

I fully understand the issues with ownership of wives. But don't know how else to express it simply.


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## 涼宮

Thank you very much. 



> keep in mind that _min_, _din_ and _vår _are true possessive pronouns and hence conjugated as adjectives whereas the other forms are grammaticalized genitives that don't conjugate according to the nouns.


 
Could you give me an instance in which it happens?

Thank you 



> _sin, si, sitt, sine_


 
Is 'si' masculine and 'sin' feminine?


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## louisjanus

no, _sin_ is used for *masculine* nouns in the singular. _si_ is feminine nouns, _sitt_ neuter nouns, _sine_ plural nouns

_Min, mi, mitt, mine_ follows the same pattern.


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## hanne

Tjahzi said:


> han/h*a*m/hans


A bit late for a typo warning, but better late than never...


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## Tjahzi

I'm not sure exactly of what you wanted an example of, but here you go:

Singular:
_min stol - mitt bord
din stol - ditt bord
hans stol - hans bord
hennes stol - hennes bord
vår stol - vårt bord
deres stol - deres bord_

Plural:
_mine stoler - mine bord
dine stoler - dine bord
hans stoler - hans bord
hennes stoler - hennes bord
våre stoler - våre bord
deres stoler - deres bord_

This means, that phrases such as _His big red table is new_ and _His big read tables are new _are distinguished by the declension of the strong adjective (in this case _new_), rather than by inflecting the noun or conjugating the verb in question. Hence, they translate to _Hans store rø__de bord er nytt _and _Hans __store rø__de bord er nye _respectively_.
_


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## Ben Jamin

louisjanus said:


> And the *reflexive* possessive (only form is for 3rd person) is
> 
> _sin, si, sitt, sine_
> 
> You use it if the subject 'owns' the object. I usually give the humorous example to my students:
> 
> 1] han kysser kona hans (someone else's wife)
> 2] han kysser kona si (his own wife)
> 
> In 1], the object is owned by someone other than the subject.
> In 2], the subject _han_ owns the object (his own)
> 
> I fully understand the issues with ownership of wives. But don't know how else to express it simply.


 
These rules are true for standard written bokmål. In the colloquial use the reflexive pronouns are confused with the possesive pronouns by a constantly growing number of speakers. In such usage 'sin' in the afore mentioned example can mean both the subject's own wife and somebody else's wife. This usage has become almost a norm in many newspapers.
A typical example"Per kjørte Pål til leiligheten sin", where the apartment in question can be both Per's and Pål's.
The result is that there is a couple of important structural words with not only ambiguous but even contradictory meaning, that could be compared to using the same word for "your" and "mine". This is really confusing not only for new learners of the language, but for everybody.


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## Magb

Tjahzi said:


> This means, that phrases such as _His big red table is new_ and _His big read tables are new _are distinguished by the declension of the strong adjective (in this case _new_), rather than by inflecting the noun or conjugating the verb in question. Hence, they translate to _Hans store rø__de bord er nytt _and _Hans __store rø__de bord er nye _respectively_.
> _



Everything you said is true, but note that another (and to me, more natural) way of saying "Hans store røde bord" is "Det store røde bordet hans". Similarly, the plural form would be "De store røde bordene hans". I suspect that part of the reason why this locution is so common is precisely because in your two example sentences, the difference between the singular and the plural is only marked on the adjective at the end, which is a recipe for misunderstanding. In my version, the grammatical number is marked on the definite article, the weak adjectives and the noun, in addition to the strong adjective on the end. Languages tend to develop "redundant" marking of things like grammatical number, case, negation, etc., because it's a good way to keep a misheard word from completely reversing the intended meaning of the sentence.



Ben Jamin said:


> These rules are true for standard written bokmål. In the colloquial use the reflexive pronouns are confused with the possesive pronouns by a constantly growing number of speakers. In such usage 'sin' in the afore mentioned example can mean both the subject's own wife and somebody else's wife. This usage has become almost a norm in many newspapers.
> A typical example"Per kjørte Pål til leiligheten sin", where the apartment in question can be both Per's and Pål's.
> The result is that there is a couple of important structural words with not only ambiguous but even contradictory meaning, that could be compared to using the same word for "your" and "mine". This is really confusing not only for new learners of the language, but for everybody.



Could you give some examples of this happening in practice (that is, with the reflexive pronoun agreeing with the object of the main clause)? I can't say I've noticed it much. I could certainly only ever interpret the apartment as being Per's in your example.


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## Ben Jamin

Magb said:


> Could you give some examples of this happening in practice (that is, with the reflexive pronoun agreeing with the object of the main clause)? I can't say I've noticed it much. I could certainly only ever interpret the apartment as being Per's in your example.


 
The example I gave "Per kjørte Pål til leiligheten sin" (names are changed) is a slightly altered quotation from a newspaper (I do not remember which). The original text was "Politimannen kjørte henne til leiligheten sin", but from the context one could unerstand that it was her apartment.
This phenomenon has been described many times by Per Egil Hegge.
From now on I will collect quotations of this usage and note the sources, and present them successively in this thread.


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## 涼宮

Thank you very much all of you, now I think I will be able to handle better the possessives.


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