Abstract
The linguistic description of possessives is controversial. In traditional grammar they are defined as carriers of the meaning of possession or belonging; however, this paper intends to prove that in many cases such a meaning does not appear, and therefore, the possessive semantics of adjectives and pronouns known as possessives is a myth. Moreover, this article’s aim is to show the importance of context in the interpretation of the real meaning of a possessive. in order to confirm these hypotheses, and given the scarcity of works concerning Portuguese possessives, studies on English, Spanish and Polish ones carried out by various authors have been analyzed. What is more, some data from Reference Corpus of Contemporary Portuguese (CRPC) have been examined. First of all, two different classifications of possessives are presented. Then, some cases of possessor deletion are shown, special attention being paid to the forms of expressing inalienable possession. After that, some structural characteristics of possessives are described, as well as their function as determiners. Finally, the paper shows the role that cultural and situational contexts play in the interpretation of the meaning of possessives.
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