x and them

[Arnold Zwicky]

allen maberry <maberry at u.washington.edu> considers some headless
possessives, following up on beverly flanigan's reference to

 >"We're going over to Christina's [place]."

allen adds:

 >We're going to Dave's [place].
 >Mike? He's one of Dave's [kids].

but these - the headless 'locational possessive' of "Dave's [place]"
or the headless 'contextual possessive' of "This is one of Dave's
[pencils]" (indicating a pencil) - are not what the original posters
were talking about; notice that the examples came up in a discussion
of the (dialectally restricted) "x and them" construction, which seems
to be paraphrased (for speakers of still another dialect) by "x's
[family]", meaning 'x and his family'.  (apparently, for at least some
speakers of this variety - not mine, by the way - x is always a male
name, which is why there might be feminist objections, since families
are being picked out via the name of male heads of households only.)

as far as i know, headless locational and contextual possessives are
generally available in the english-speaking world.  but the headless
'paterfamilial possessive' of "Have you heard what's going on with
Dave's?" (as the beginning of a conversation) is dialectally
restricted.  rather narrowly, i think.

so there are people for whom "x's" picks out a family by reference to
its male head x.  are there others with more general usages - picking
out a family by reference to *some* salient member, or even picking
out a group of any sort by reference to a salient member?

and, for anyone who has this construction at all, is it singular or
plural (or either, or avoided) in subject position?  that is, could
you say, at the beginning of a conversation, "Are Dave's coming over
for Sunday dinner?"?  or would it be "Is Dave's coming over for Sunday
dinner?"?  or either, maybe with a subtle difference in intent?  or
would you just try to avoid both of them?

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu), who *thinks* he remembers
  his pennsylvania dutch grandmother using the "x and them"
  construction, but can't recall ever having heard "x's" as its
  equivalent