which its = "whose"

[Amy West]

Because I'm Commander Obvious, is there thinking that this construction
is influenced by the dictum to use "who" only for referents that are
persons? Are you seeing any "that's"?

---Amy West

(I will confess to preferring "who" over "that" for the relative pron.
for persons just as a point of style, AND further confess to making that
comment on students' papers, but I do note that it's a point of style,
not "grammar.")

On 6/14/14, 12:03 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Fri, 13 Jun 2014 13:36:15 -0400
> From:    Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: which its = "whose"
>
> Long ago I mentioned the difficulty even  grad students in English had 30
> years ago with "whose" as a subordinating conjunction after something not
> human, as in "an idea whose time has come." (Some online grammarians now
> prefer the counter-rational "subordinate conjunction." Right.)
>
> One of the grotesque conjunctions the studes used was "which's."  Another
> was the perhaps genetically identical "which its."
>
> Now grownups use it:
>
> http://cnn.org/2014/06/11/opinion/ben-ghiat-world-war-one/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
>
>
> "the Submarine was introduced in the 19th Century by the French called the
> Plongeur, Which its designs were used by the Confederates to build the H.L.
> Hunley"
>
> JL

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