Learn English – Possessive pronouns vs possessive determiners

copular-verbsdeterminersgrammarpronouns

If my understanding is correct, the possessive personal pronouns (which are mine, thine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs) are used in place of nouns, whereas the possessive determiners (which are my, thy, your, his, her, its, our, and their) are used as adjectives.

If this is the case, then why is example 1 below correct, as opposed to example 2?

  1. Whose book is this? It is mine.
  2. Whose book is this? It is *my.

Best Answer

Adjective and noun are not useful categories here. Mine and its like function as NP (noun phrases), while my etc function as determiners, that require a head (such as a noun) to form a NP.