The sentence

3. Mine, yours, his, hers, ours, yours, and theirs are possessive pronouns. This means they
stand on their own: The book is mine. (Not *That is mine book*)
We cannot use possessives with the. (Not *That’s the my car./That car’s the mine.*)
The double genitive: ‘He is a friend of mine”
1. We can say: He is your friend.
Or: He is a friend of yours. (No apostrophe: not *He is a friend of your’s.*)
And not: He is a friend of mine. (Not *He is a friend of me.*)
2. We can say: He is my father’s friend.
We still use ‘s after of if we say: He is a friend of my father’s. (Not *of my father*)
3. We often use this and that with this construction, especially when we are criticizing:
That boy of yours is in trouble again. That motorbike of yours is very noisy
‘My own’ and ‘of my own’
We can use own after possessive adjectives, not pronouns, in two ways:
I have my own room. Or: I have a room of my own. (Not *mine own room/of mine own*)
‘The’ in place of ‘my’, etc.: ‘a pain in the neck’
We sometimes use the where we might expect my, your, etc., e.g. with perts of the body
or with clothing after prepositions: He hit me in the face. She pulled me by the sleeve.
We use the to refer informally to members of the family: How are the children?
But avoid expressions like ‘Meet the wife’.
E. Reflexive pronouns (‘myself’)
Verbs commonly followed by reflexive pronouns: ‘I enjoyed myself’
1. Myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, oneself, ourselves, yourselves and themselves
are reflexive pronouns. There aren’t many verbs in English which we must always use
with reflexive pronouns: absent oneself, avail oneself (of) and pride oneself (on):
Monica absented herself from work. Jim prides himself on his cooking.
2. We often use reflexive pronouns with these verbs: amuse, blame, cut, dry, enjoy, hurt
and introduce: I’ve cut myself with the bread knife.
We can use these verbs without reflexive pronouns if we want to: I’ve cut my thumb.
We can use object pronouns (me, him, her, etc.) after these verbs only when we refer to
someone else: He amused me (but not *I amused me/I cut me*, etc.)
verb + reflexive, or not?: ‘I’ve dressed (myself)’
1. We sometimes add reflexive pronouns after verbs like dress, hide, shave and wash for
emphasis or to show that something has been done with an effort. For example, if we are
referring to a child, we might say: Polly’s now learnt how to dress herself, but we could
also say: Polly has now learnt how to dress. (without herself). The choice is ours.
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