I am in full accord with you, Alan!
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You surprise me, Luschen. On that basis, how do you differntiate between ‘my’ and ‘mine’ ?
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I don’t suppose I do - at least until now 
Here in the US, grammar instruction usually ends in middle school. I don’t think there is as much focus on naming different types of words, phrases, and clauses as perhaps in some other countries, or in ESL classes. Here are some typical worksheets a 5th or 6th grader might see. None of these worksheets really differentiates between possessive pronouns or possessive adjectives (or apparently also called “strong possessive pronouns” and “weak possessive pronouns”} - they seem to use the same term for both. After this level, there is not much grammar instruction, mainly just vocabulary, writing instruction and reading comprehension, so I bet a lot of students like me never really consider the difference.
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Thanks for the detailed information, Luschen. I found it enlightening and slightly scary, too!
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I must admit I was very surprised when way back in the early nineties I learned that in English there are ‘possessive adjectives’ since in many other Latin based languages those words are called ‘possessive pronouns’. (For example, in German we call them 'Possessivpronomen).
And here is an interesting quote from Wikipedia: The terminology used for possessive words and phrases is not consistent among all grammarians. And:
…may be called a possessive adjective , possessive determiner or adjectival possessive pronoun .
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Hi Torsten,
Out of interest how would you translate into German the illustrative example I gave to Luschen?
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Hi Alan, in modern German we call what you call ‘possessive adjective’ Possessivpronomen als Begleiter, also referred to as ‘Possessivartikel’. What you call ‘possessive pronoun’ we call Possessivpronomen als Ersatz.
In general we call the possessive pronouns ‘besitzanzeigende Eigenschaftswörter’.
Hope this helps.
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