Multi-Person Possession in English

[Jetboy]

As a native English speaker, there is one construction I do my best to avoid out of ignorance of how to form it, namely using possessive forms to refer to something belongs to both someone in the third person and someone in the first or second person. For example, if I wanted to refer to a car I share with my sister, I have no idea whether I should say "my sister's and my car", or "mine and my sister's car", or something else entirely, since neither of the above sounds quite right, and I'm left trying to pull a circumlocution. Are any of these grammatical for you? If not, is anything?

[Astraios]

For me, the normal thing would be "me and my sister's car".

For Wendy from Disney's Peter Pan, and therefore probably the more "correct" thing, it would be "my sister's car and mine".

[Viktor77]

They say the first person should follow the other person in reference, for example, he and I, and not me and him or I and he. So with this rule in mind, it's impossible to say, Larry and my's house except for as the house of Larry and I.

[Legion]

"our car".

</thread>

[Radius Solis]

There are many situations where "our" just doesn't do the job. Obviously using it is preferable when possible, but if you need to exclude any people that are already topical in the conversation, "our" becomes a bad choice.

Jetboy: I stumble on this one when it comes up too. Looking at all the possibilities...

1. "My sister's and my car" and "my and my sister's car" are both reasonably well-formed English, but both feel quite clumsy.
2. "I and my sister's car" and "me and my sister's car" also exist, where the possessive -'s is attaching to the entire compound noun phrase, although both are very nonstandard - and also both rather ambiguous, because the listener can easily confuse "[I/me and my sister]'s car" for "[I/me] and [my sister's car]" in many cases. This matters more than usual, because we only use phrasings like these when we're already trying to be really exact about reference.
3. Reversing the order from #2 to arrive at "My sister and I/me's car" has most of the problems of #2 plus introduces the jarring sequence "I's" or "me's". But you still hear it sometimes.
4. "My sister and my's car" is another way I have heard it come out of people's mouths, but this is not idiomatic in any English variety I'm aware of, and is a syntactic trainwreck too.

I have ordered the above options from least terrible to most. But when writing standard English, avoid all of them.

[schwhatever]

Basically, in my colloquial register, it prefers ridiculously putting the head at the end (since it's all a genitive construct, I think) and using some genitive variants (either adjectives or pronouns):

"my sister's and mine car"
"my and my sister's car"
"mine and my sister's car"
"my sister's and my car"

In writing or slower conversation, it's obviously preferred to pull the two phrases apart, using the head as a buffer - "my car which is also my sister's" - or more commonly to only specify one owner and then explain dual usage.

"my sister's car and mine"

IMD that reads as my car (car #1) and my sister's car (car #2). All these awkward solutions are attempts around that perceived plurality from that method.

[Arzena]

I would say me and my sister's car.

[Cedh]

What about "The car of me and my sister"?

[Viktor77]

What about "The car of me and my sister"?

The car of my sister and I, really.

[Grimalkin]

The car of my sister and I, really.

The car of I.

Ewwwww...

[Astraios]

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?

[Viktor77]

The car of my sister and I, really.

The car of I.

Ewwwww...

As if The car of me is any better!

[Magb]

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?

In Norwegian I'm inclined to say:

"Bilen til søstra mi og meg"
bil-en til søstr-a mi og meg
car-DEF to sister-DEF my.FEM and me
I.e. "The car to my sister and me"

Another possibility:

"Bilen min og søstra mis"
bil-en min og søstr-a mi-s
car-DEF my.MASC and sister-DEF my.FEM-POSS
"The car my and my sister's"

At a stretch:

"Søstra mi og meg sin bil"
søstr-a mi og meg sin bil
sister-DEF my.FEM and me POSS.MASC car
"My sister and me's car"

All of these sound a little weird, admittedly. I'd definitely prefer saying "our car" or something similar instead if possible.

[Legion]

French has a neat trick here; it can make possession more explicit by adding "à" + pronoun after the possessed noun, so:
"sa voiture" (his/her car) > "sa voiture à lui" (his car), "sa voiture à elle" (her car).

And thus:

"Notre voiture, à ma sœur et (à) moi" (My sister and I's car)

[äreo]

The car of my sister and I, really.

The car of I.

Ewwwww...

As if The car of me is any better!

Well, 'the car of me' at least makes grammatical sense to me. 'The car of I' doesn't, tho, because 'me' is accusative/oblique and 'I' is nominative.

[roninbodhisattva]

I ran into this this morning, I did "my and Carol's analysis."

[Viktor77]

As if The car of me is any better!

Well, 'the car of me' at least makes grammatical sense to me. 'The car of I' doesn't, tho, because 'me' is accusative/oblique and 'I' is nominative.

It's not anymore grammatically correct. "Me" is the accusative/dative pronoun and not a genitive pronoun (that is "mine"). Which brings us back to "The car of my sister and mine." For some odd reason, despite no grammatical shift, the use of "mine" over "me" changes the semantic meaning.

[candrodor]

Use something like 'joint' or 'shared'?

[spats]

"Bilen min og søstra mis"
bil-en min og søstr-a mi-s
car-DEF my.MASC and sister-DEF my.FEM-POSS
"The car my and my sister's"

I don't speak Icelandic, but Björk's Medúlla album has a very pretty song called "Vökuró" which uses this same construction a couple of times:

"bærinn minn og þinn" (my farm and yours)
"grasið mitt og þitt" (my grass and yours)

----

English doesn't handle this well at all. Informally, I would always say something like "me and my sister's car" or "my sister and my car". The latter only works in spoken English when you can put a phrase break after "my" to differentiate "(my sister and my) car" and "(my sister) and (my car)".

The problem is that English uses two paradigms for posession - genitive declension for pronouns and a clitic for other nouns. It also has a defined order for conjoining pronouns and nouns which puts (at least in formal English) the pronoun in the less useful place - i.e. where the clitic should be attached. You then have three questions:

• what order do you put the words in?
• which declension do you use for the personal pronoun?
• if the pronoun goes second, do you add the clitic?

I like conlangs with a bit more inflection, so the problem is lessened somewhat. The easiest approach (assuming that the possessor is marked) is to do:

1PS.GEN CONJ 1PS.GEN sister-GEN car-NOM
or
car-NOM 1PS.GEN CONJ sister-GEN 1PS.GEN

... depending on your branching, and assuming the car is the subject rather than the object.

There is still ambiguity here, as can be shown in the following example:

1PS.GEN CONJ 2PS.GEN sister-GEN car-NOM

Is it "(my and your) sister's car" or "my and (your sister's) car"? In this case, context would probably make the correct reading obvious in most cases. Going a step further, one of my conlangs additionally declines genitive forms as adjectives, further removing ambiguity:

1PS.GEN-N.NOM CONJ 1PS.GEN[-F.GEN] sister-F.GEN-N.NOM car-N.NOM

(Are genitives on genitives further declined? I prefer not, but you could go down that rabbit hole if you like. I recommend no more than one additional level, just for sanity.)

In this case, head-dependent agreement (gender, number, case) between the possessive adjective and the possessed object make it difficult to create ambiguity, though in a purely grammatical case system with few categories, and in which humans and common possessions can share a case (i.e. most European languages), it doesn't remove the issue entirely.

Isn't language wonderful?

[spats]

I should add another possibility here, for a similar language but with old Latin "-que"-style conjunction:

1PS.GEN-CONJ 1PS.GEN sister-GEN-CONJ car-NOM

"my-and my sister's-and car"

Or combining both nominal+adjectival declension and this approach:

1PS.GEN-N.NOM-CONJ 1PS.GEN[-F.GEN] sister-F.GEN-N.NOM-CONJ car-N.NOM

"my(n)-and my(f) sister's(n)-and car

These should leave very little room for ambiguity, if that's what you want.

[ratammer]

Something like "the car that's mine and my sister's" sounds okay, or you could avoid the possessive altogether with "the car my sister and I have" (or "the car me and my sister have", but that's a different argument altogether).

[Lyhoko Leaci]

"Our car."

Or probably "Me and my sister's car."

[Travis B.]

"Our car."

Or probably "Me and my sister's car."

"Our car" and "me and my sister's car" are by far the most natural ways to put it to me. Most of the other forms put forth here honestly sound quite awkward and unnatural to me, actually.

Edit: I made a minor correction of a word above.

[Magb]

Informally, I would always say something like "me and my sister's car"

I would say me and my sister's car.

Or probably "Me and my sister's car."

To my non-native ears this is the least clunky option anyone's suggested in this thread -- in a colloquial context anyway. I get that it can be misinterpreted as "[Me] and [my sister's car]" as opposed to the intended "[Me and my sister]'s car", but in what situation would that really be likely to happen? I doubt that many would ever arrive at the wrong readings for sentences like "This is me and my sister's car", "Me and my sister's car got towed", "Have you seen me and my sister's car?", etc. As for the oblique pronoun appearing in the subject, that's so widespread in English that it can hardly even be considered nonstandard. It might feel out of place in a formal text, but not in spoken language or in an informal text.

[Jipí]

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.

ObConlang: I don't see why sava (si) nā nay kinana nā (with relative pronoun or without) should be a problem.