"I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently packed in."

[Jonathan Lighter]

At this level, anything goes.

JL

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 8:31 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently
> packed
>              in."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> But shouldn't possessive "that + s" be spelled without the apostrophe, by
> analogy with the other possessive pronouns--"its," "hers," "his," "ours,"
> "whose"?
>
> --Charlie
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Joel
> S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 10:57 PM
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 2/15/2011 05:45 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >I mentioned this some years ago. I had a freshman in the early '80s who
> >insisted that "that's" was correct because "whose" referred to people.
>
> Whose what I would have said.  And I would have said "whose".
>
> Joel
>
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