Why do Americans put my in front of everything?
I watch a lot of youtube but rarely by means of movies, unfortunately. Shouldn’t North Americans put “My” in front of other things? “So I’ve got my grill fired up, I’ve got my oil heated” etc.
In Sweden, students might just say “I’ve got the grill fired up and I’ve also heated the oil”
Another example is in the movie War of the Worlds from 2005 when Rachel says something like “You may get TiVo, we’ve got TiVo at home, I can watch MY shows after I’ve done my homework” Note:
I don’t count “my” before homework because that seems legit.
Is it because a noun phrase in English calls for a determiner, and in English (as opposed to other languages), possesive pronouns function as determiners? Do you recognize these pronominal possessive
determiners in modern English as my, your, her, my, her, their, their, and whom (as in Whose coats are this? The guy whose car was stolen ). As noted above, they indicate definiteness, like the definite article the.
By contrast, in my grill, the word my tends to be a more suitable determiner than the, simply because a perfect example matches the word, which might be why, or what should be used, than my grill.
Norsely, it has nothing primarily to do with possession (cf. My street ( my street); but solely the combination of grammatical obligation and need for semantic clarity.
Using “me” in these cases emphasizes a personal connection to the subject: whether through choosing or ownership or another quality. For example, if your subject or topic was a student and you were a student, if you were a student, using the object in these cases also was. My shows indicates which shows this person chooses to watch (likely regularly) which says something about their identity. My grill and my oil highlight the personal connection to the implements while cooking. Tools or implements in particular seem to get this treatment frequently as they are agents of the speaker in a way.
Having experience with Scandinavian mores, I’m not surprised that Swedish idioms tend toward the less personal.
Is it because a noun phrase in English calls for a determiner, and in English (as opposed to other languages), possesive pronouns function as determiners? Do you recognize these pronominal possessive
determiners in modern English as my, your, her, my, her, their, their, and whom (as in Whose coats are this? The guy whose car was stolen ). As noted above, they indicate definiteness, like the definite article the.
By contrast, in my grill, the word my tends to be a more suitable determiner than the, simply because a perfect example matches the word, which might be why, or what should be used, than my grill.
Norsely, it has nothing primarily to do with possession (cf. My street ( my street); but solely the combination of grammatical obligation and need for semantic clarity.
Is it because a noun phrase in English calls for a determiner, and in English (as opposed to other languages), possesive pronouns function as determiners? Do you recognize these pronominal possessive
determiners in modern English as my, your, her, my, her, their, their, and whom (as in Whose coats are this? The guy whose car was stolen ). As noted above, they indicate definiteness, like the definite article the.
By contrast, in my grill, the word my tends to be a more suitable determiner than the, simply because a perfect example matches the word, which might be why, or what should be used, than my grill.
Norsely, it has nothing primarily to do with possession (cf. My street ( my street); but solely the combination of grammatical obligation and need for semantic clarity.
Using “me” in these cases emphasizes a personal connection to the subject: whether through choosing or ownership or another quality. For example, if your subject or topic was a student and you were a student, if you were a student, using the object in these cases also was. My shows indicates which shows this person chooses to watch (likely regularly) which says something about their identity. My grill and my oil highlight the personal connection to the implements while cooking. Tools or implements in particular seem to get this treatment frequently as they are agents of the speaker in a way.
Having experience with Scandinavian mores, I’m not surprised that Swedish idioms tend toward the less personal.
