Multi-Person Possession in English

[Bedelato]

I would agree in saying that me and my sister's car is the most likely construction for me.

[Travis B.]

I'd say me and my sister's car as well. In German … uh … in everyday speech I'd probably say das Auto von mir und meiner Schwester probably. Mein und meiner Schwester Auto sounds too literary (and actually I'd go for this construction in formal writing). Also, for politeness, you should avoid to list yourself first, so meiner Schwester und mein Auto, although this actually sounds more awkward than the "less polite" version In normal writing I'd maybe go for a relative clause with gehören (to belong to): das Auto, das mir und meiner Schwester gehört.

Despite what they say about politeness, typically in everyday English it is more natural to use "me and my X" rather than "my X and me" and especially "my X and I" (which has a rather formal sound to it, and is hypercorrect when not a subject itself) - even as the subject, where in coordinate constructions it is quite normal in everyday speech to use oblique pronouns rather than nominative ones. This goes for other personal pronouns paired with possessive determiners other than just me and my as well.

[Jetboy]

Yeah, come to think of it, "me and my sister's car" is probably what I'd use colloquially, but I doubt it would fly in a formal setting. Of course, neither would pretty much all of the above options, so some sort of circumlocution seems the only option. Gah, clunkiness.

[Soap]

I think it would be grammatically correct to say My sister and I's car, since -'s is only a clitic, and and modifies the whole phrase. (Compare Adam and Jamie's car).

[spats]

I think it would be grammatically correct to say My sister and I's car, since -'s is only a clitic, and and modifies the whole phrase. (Compare Adam and Jamie's car).

Except that the "correct" rule for pronoun agreement in conjunctions is whatever case the phrase is in. What is the appropriate case when you've added a clitic? Not sure, but nominative (being both inappropriate and more marked than the oblique) seems completely wrong.

I think you could make an argument for the following:
"my and my sister's car"

This appears to follow all three relevant rules:

• the pronoun-before-noun rule
• the clitic-goes-at-the-end-of-the-list rule
• the pronoun-in-the-correct-case rule

[Yng]

My sister and I's car or mine and my sister's car are the grammatical options for me here. The latter is what I would say.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

"The car my sister and I own/have"?

[Hakaku]

For me the only direct admissible construction would be "Me and my sister's car" -- unless you rephrased it into "the car (that) me and my sister own" or "the car (that) my sister and I/me own". But the construction "My sister and I's car" strikes me as way awkward, as does "Mine and my sister's car".

[Jashan]

(Native speaker, American English)

I'd also favor me and my sister's car. Although honestly, I'd tend to add a clarifying remark, a la "Me and my sister, we share a car, and...." or "Me and my sister's car together / that we share"...

1) My sister's car and mine parses, but means something different for me: it reads as "my sister's car and my [own, distinct] car" -- i.e. two cars

2) My sister and I.... or any variation with "I", sounds totally wrong to me to use in possessive contexts.

3) My sister and my's I get the drift, but it's syntactically incorrect.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

<-Native speaker of American English, with some possible Australian influence, and now-ingrained pretensions of quirkiness.

Some options, and my reactions to them:

"My and my sister's car": about as "unmarked" as I can get it. Probably how I would say it without thinking, if I didn't use a circumlocution.

"My sister and I's car": also fairly neutral if I heard it, and I could see myself saying it without thinking about it. If I actually think about it, however, it starts to seem weird.

"Me and my sister's car": somewhat neutral, but sounds a bit "wrong" to my ears. Probably from trying to hyper-correct things like "me and X" used as a subject to "X and I", and the slight ambiguity of possibly meaning "my sister's car and me".

"My sister and me's car": sounds a bit more wrong, but I can't really say why. Maybe hyper-correction issues, like above. Now that I think about it, "and" plus a clearly oblique pronoun form "me, him, her, them" all sound wrong, even if the noun phrase is being used objectively. Goddamit, now I want to go start testing sentences...

"Mine and my sister's car": also sounds wrong, as IMI "mine" can only be used as a pronoun, not a possessive adjective.

[con quesa]

Like the other American English speakers, "me and my sister's car" is the only entirely natural construction, and anything else is possibly mandated by some prescriptive rule or another we think, but does not sound entirely natural.

Is it bad that I want to hear about how people's conlangs and non-English natlangs handle this more than I want to hear about how to make it sound right in English?

This is actually kind of a problematic construction for Saimiar as well. Normally, Saimiar indicates possession by putting the possessor in the relational case if it is a full noun, or by putting an affix on the possessed noun if the possessor is a pronoun. "My horse" would be "Mixes-ebai", "my sister's horse" would be "Gani-bai-zi mixes", and I"m not sure how I'd combine the two. Probably the Saimi would be uncomfortable with combining the use of the possession affixes with another relational case noun in the clause: *"Gani-bai-zi mixesebai". Maybe they would just resort to putting the independant pronoun in the relational case, which is an option: "Ebai soi gani-bai-zi mixes".

[Sevly]

I think it would be grammatically correct to say My sister and I's car, since -'s is only a clitic, and and modifies the whole phrase. (Compare Adam and Jamie's car).

Except that the "correct" rule for pronoun agreement in conjunctions is whatever case the phrase is in. What is the appropriate case when you've added a clitic? Not sure, but nominative (being both inappropriate and more marked than the oblique) seems completely wrong.

I think you could make an argument for the following:
"my and my sister's car"

This appears to follow all three relevant rules:

• the pronoun-before-noun rule
• the clitic-goes-at-the-end-of-the-list rule
• the pronoun-in-the-correct-case rule

Those might be the rules for formal English, but natural spoken English doesn't follow the last rule anymore. As was mentioned in another thread, it seems that the distinction between I/me is not so much one of case but of position in the sentence, i.e. I is used only as the sole (pro)noun preceding a verb and me everywhere else. In my informal speech:

1S
I'm going swimming.

1S & 3S
Me and him are going swimming. >> He and I are going swimming.

We can extend this to me/my, the latter being used when the pronoun (or determiner) is alone in preceding the head noun and the former otherwise.

1S.POSS
It's my car.

(1S & 3S).POSS
It's me and my sister's car. >> It's my and my sister's car.

Also, informal English discards the "list yourself last to be polite" rule. In almost all conjunctioned phrases involved the first person, me is preferred and is listed first.

[tezcatlip0ca]

All options are ungrammatical for me, but the best is "My sister's and my car". Damn prescriptivism.

[spats]

I think you could make an argument for the following:
"my and my sister's car"

Those might be the rules for formal English, but natural spoken English doesn't follow the last rule anymore. As was mentioned in another thread, it seems that the distinction between I/me is not so much one of case but of position in the sentence, i.e. I is used only as the sole (pro)noun preceding a verb and me everywhere else. In my informal speech:

Yes, I should have been more specific; I was referring in that case to the "correct" formal form, not the correct colloquial one.

The correct colloquial form is - at least in NAE - almost certainly "me and my sister's car". As you've pointed out, the oblique is the least-marked and "default" case for pronouns in colloquial speech. Add that to the fairly firm rule that only the last item in the list of possessors gets marked and you get the "me and my sister's" construction.

[finlay]

"me and my sister's" or "mine and my sister's" - the rest are ungrammatical.

[Grigor]

I'd only ever say 'me and my sister's car' - everything else sounds strange and un-English to my ears.

[Ċeaddawīc]

"the motor-powered automobile belonging to and of me and belonging to and of my sister, as in it is my car and also and additionally it is my sister's motorcar, which belongs to us, my sister and I, who both individually and collectively own said motor-powered automobile"

That's probably most natural for me.

[Chargone]

native speaker of New Zealand English (more university than tradesman type speech, despite being neither) here.

like in many other situations, i'd tend to solve this by avoiding it:
"the car, which my sister and i own", or at some point having mentioned the ownership previously and then referring to it with 'our car' or 'the car'.

... yes, it is not uncommon in NZ English to restructure significant quantities of speech to avoid awkward constructions like this, ( the classic example of a lesser form of this is how the awkwardness of pronouncing 'vulnerable' was enough to get it replaced with 'at risk' in all contexts, at least on tv. doesn't sound right to have the news anchors tripping over words, after all.)

[schwhatever]

I think it would be grammatically correct to say My sister and I's car, since -'s is only a clitic, and and modifies the whole phrase. (Compare Adam and Jamie's car).

IMD (idiolect?), the default would be to mark both though - "Adam's and Jamie's car". It seems like I'm operating with a different understand of of the clitic (?) than most of the people in this thread.

Also, at Jashan, the nifty solution to the ambiguity in the phrase "my sister's car and mine" is to front everything - "my sister's and mine car" contrasts with "my sister's and mine cars". Not that it doesn't sound awkward, but it's how most people in my family (and some others) say it.

[sirred]

To 32nd, 'me and my sister's car' sounds natural to this American English speaker. Using 'mine and my sister's car' sounds a bit like still using 'whom'.

[zuben]

'me and my sister's car' is the only one that sounds OK to me- I'd use that in both formal and informal settings. To my ears at least, all the others sound ungrammatical.