x and them

Peter A. McGraw pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU
Fri Mar 3 16:27:49 UTC 2000


Yes--Arnold has been the only one so far to "get it."  "We're going over to
Dale's [house]" is common everywhere, and I use it all the time myself.
What I don't use, and what my great aunt in Iowa used, was, "Dales (or
Dale's) were over here last week" or "Dale(')s went to Florida last
winter."  I don't have an actual utterance recorded, but I'm pretty sure
the word took a plural verb form (for those--including my great aunt--who
use one).  This doesn't settle the question of plural or possessive,
however, since it could be derived from an underlying "Dale's family" and
still use a plural verb.

I don't know for sure whether the usage was strictly patriarchal.  I never
heard this great aunt use it with anything but the name of one of her three
sons.  If she'd had daughters, for all I know she might have used their
names in the construction.  The objection of the colleague in Ohio is the
only indication I had that the construction was patriarchal, and her
objection might have been based on prescriptivism rather than feminism.  I
had the feeling it was the latter, but unfortunately, I didn't ask her to
elaborate.

Peter Mc.

--On Wed, Mar 1, 2000 9:23 PM -0800 Arnold Zwicky
<zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:

> 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



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu



More information about the Ads-l mailing list