Possessive adjectives

Question

In the sentence "Apres, j'ai invite mes voisins a un aperitif pour faire leur connaissance", I would have thought "leur connaissance" should be plural (leurs connaissances) because she invited "mes voisins".

Maarten Kamp · Answer

Brett,

this is a tricky area of grammar.

The link below is to a response to a similar question and covers the fact that in 3rd person plural, when each person referred to has only 1 of the possession ( ‘ connaissance ‘ in this case ), both leur and the possession remain in the ‘ singular ‘ ( no added terminal ‘s’ ) form.

There is also a link to the topic on Laura Lawless site.

https://progress.lawlessfrench.com/questions/view/plural-singular-1