apostrophe, although it is sometimes written with one in error (see hypercorrection) by confusion with the common possessive ending -'s and the contraction it's used for it is and it has. Possessive its was originally formed with an apostrophe in the 17th century, but it had been dropped by the early 19th century, presumably to make it more similar to the other personal pronoun possessives. The interrogative and relative pronoun who has the possessive whose. In its relative use, whose can also refer to inanimate antecedents, but its interrogative use always refers to persons. Other pronouns that form possessives (mainly indefinite pronouns) do so in the same way as nouns, with 's, for example one's, somebody's (and somebody else's). Certain pronouns, such as the common demonstratives this, that, these, and those, do not form their possessives using s, and of this, of that, etc., are used instead. English possessive pronouns agree with the gender of their antecedent or referent, while, in other languages, such as Italian, the possessive pronoun agrees with the gender of the head noun of the NP in which it appears. Compare he loved his mother, in which his is masculine in agreement with he to ama sua madre, in which sua is feminine in agreement with madre (mother). Syntactic functions of possessive words or phrases English possessives play two principal roles in syntax: the role of possessive determiners (more popularly called possessive adjectives; see ) standing before a noun, as in my house or John's two sisters; the role of possessive pronouns (although they may not always be called that), standing independently in place of a noun, as in mine is large; they prefer John's. As determiners Possessive noun phrases such as "John's" can be used as determiners. When a form corresponding to a personal pronoun is used as a possessive determiner, the correct form must be used, as described above (my rather than mine, etc.). Possessive determiners are not used in combination with articles or other definite determiners. For example, it is not correct to say *the my hat, *a my hat or *this my hat; an alternative is provided in the last two cases by the "double genitive" as described in the following section – a hat of mine (also one of my hats), this hat of mine. Possessive determiners can nonetheless be combined with certain quantifiers, as in my six hats (which differs