chapter 2 vocabulary mea and tua

[mohit]

Salvete,
In the vocabulary of chapter 2 Wheelock has given paradigme of genetive of pronoun ego and tu as mea and tua.He also gives its plural form.
How is it possible to make feminine adjective of a paradigme of a pronoun? And then its plural.So does it mean that we can do another paradigmes of mea and tua like porta?
Mei mensa, mei amicus, mei pilum.Are all these wrong?
Valete.

[furrykef]

The genitive of ego, etc. is not used to modify a noun. So you cannot say meī mēnsa, meī amīcus, or meī pīlum. They would have to be mēnsa mea, amīcus meus, and pīlum meum (the meus/meum/mea can come before the noun, but you'll usually find it after).

The form meī is only used when it means "of me" rather than "my". For example, pars meī (= "part of me").

[mohit]

I did not see this type of adjectve making from a pronoun paradigme.
Is this also in ancient greek or in any other romance language?

[spiphany]

I think a lot of languages use a possessive adjective rather than the genitive pronoun...
French certainly does ("mon chapeau" "ma maison"). Russian does. German does (come to think of it, I'm not sure there is an independent genitive form for the personal pronouns in German -- at least, I can't think of a situation where I would use one.)

This development is actually fairly logical, when you think about it. Unlike the other cases, the genitive almost always modifies another noun. A word that modifies another noun performs much the same function as an adjective. Since the pronouns are so common, why not just make an adjective out of them rather than saying "of me" "of him" (and so forth) all the time?

(When Latin does use a pronoun to indicate possession/ownership, it often prefers the dative rather than the genitive: "nomen mihi Marcus est" "est liber tibi")