“Remember: Y’all is singular. All y’all is plural. All y’all’s is plural possessive.” - Kinky Friedman

Note: Possesives work the same for nouns and pronouns.

Possessives act as determiners before nouns. The meanings conveyed are:

• Possession - Whose book is this? Refers to possession of the book.
• Connection - The bank’s employees. The employees are connected to the bank.
• The performer of the act - Who ran? Refers to the performer of the act running.
• The classification of a thing - NEED EXAMPLE

Possessives introduce gerund phrases. They also substitute nominitive case expressions fr the performer of the action.

Gerund - a noun formed from a verb (such as the ‘-ing’ form of an English verb when used as a noun)

Exceptions

The possesive form is not used when the pronoun does not immediatly procede the gerund.

After verbs like see, hear and watch the objective form of the pronoun is used.

If the action is so general no particular performer is in mind no noun or pronoun introduces the gerund phrase. Writing books can be difficult.The act of writing the book does not reffer to any specific person and is too broad so no noun or pronoun introduces the gerund phrase writing books.

Functions of Independent Possessives

Independent possessives are nominals.

Nominal - functioning as or like a noun.