Can we say the form of "a + the possesive + a noun"?
For example,
A friend of Tomas's is smart.
A Tomas's friend is smart.
I believe that both of the two sentences work and have the exact same meaning.
But , in the same way, replacing Tomas's with mine,
A friend of mine is smart.
A my friend is smart.
I think that both of these two sentences don't work in the same way the previous two sentence work, which means that the second one is such a sentence I have never seen before as a grammatically correct sentence.
Do I understand correct or the second sentence with the word "mine" is acctually correct?
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Answers · 5
2
The second example you give doesn't work.
You cannot use that grammar structure with a possessive proper noun.
You are right about the second set of examples.
In both cases, neither of the second sentences work.
1
"A Tomas' friend is smart" isn't correct. It should be "Tomas' friend is smart". Because you're indicating the name, you can't use the indefinite article, otherwise it sounds like there are many Tomases in one place and you're saying that if a Tomas has a friend, this friend is always smart.
Compare: "A child's voice is quiet", "He believes a woman's place is in the kitchen" (in these sentences, we're talking about children and women in general, not concrete people like a kid named Joey or a woman named Mary, so we're using the indefinite article). And now compare: "Joey's voice was quiet", "He believes Mary's place is in the kitchen".
"A friend of mine is smart" is correct. "My friend is smart" (without the "a") - correct.
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