student asking question

Can I say "your lips and your tongue" instead of "your lips and tongue on yours"?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

It seems you are confusing the use of these two possessives here. While "your lips and tongue" refer to "your lips and your tongue" the "yours" is referring to the machine that he is kissing and therefore should not be omitted from the sentence. You could say "your lips and your tongue in yours" however the sentence feels very repetitive. It is much more natural sounding to say, "your lips and tongue on yours", to reduce the repetition of the possessive "your". A good tip to not get these two possessive forms confused is to remember that we use "your" when we are using it as a possessive with a noun, like "lips" here. Ex: Is this your book? Ex: Is this your car? We use "yours" as a possessive pronoun when we leave out the noun. "Yours" stands in for "your" + the noun. Ex: I found a book. Is it yours? (I've already mentioned the book, so I don't need to say it again.) Ex: I hear a car alarm in the parking lot. Is it yours? (Is it your car that is making the alarm noise?)

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