clausal possessives
Natalie Maynor
maynor at CS.MSSTATE.EDU
Thu Oct 19 21:57:20 UTC 2000
I might have mentioned before the wonderful answer I got on a
sophomore quiz one time. I often give pop quizzes of ten easy
questions to keep the students reading in English Lit Survey,
and this one was on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." The
question I asked was something like "Who did the Green Knight
turn out to be?" The answer was "the lady whom tried to seduce
hims husband." Although I don't think that student ended up
passing the course (she had a bit of a writing problem :-), I
do think I counted that quiz answer as correct, giving her the
benefit of the doubt on the antecedent of "him." I told them
that if they couldn't remember a character's name to identify
the character in some other way. She did. What better way to
identify Sir Bircilak than as "the lady who tried to seduce
Gawain's husband"?
--Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)
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