x and them

[Nancy Elliott]

My grandmother in Missouri says "Shirley's" to refer to her divorced
daughter and family:  "Shirley's was over last Sunday for dinner."
("was" = sg. and pl.)

----------
>From: "Peter A. McGraw" <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: x and them
>Date: Fri, Mar 3, 2000, 8:27 AM
>

> 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
>