"I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently packed in."

[Dan Goncharoff]

I would never write "that's", although I would say it in casual speech.

I would never use "whose" for an inanimate object.

In written form, I would have structured the sentence differently to avoid
these issues.

DanG

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Seán Fitzpatrick
<grendel.jjf at verizon.net>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       =?iso-8859-1?Q?Se=E1n_Fitzpatrick?= <grendel.jjf at VERIZON.NET
> >
> Subject:      Re: "I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently
> packed
>              in."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Latitudinarian codswallop.  <<"Any thing" go's.>>  And that's "final".
>
> I have encountered the supposed rule that "who-whose-whom" cannot be used
> with non-human antecedents several times in the past few decades.
>
> The programmers I work with often use non-neutral personal pronouns to
> refer
> to programs and modules:  "... If he can't find a match he throws an
> exception and dies".  I don't go that far, but I would say "whose hard
> drive".
>
> Seán Fitzpatrick
> No oil for pacifists!
> http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laurence Horn [mailto:laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 10:11 AM
> Subject: Re: "I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently packed
> in."
>
> At 9:02 AM -0500 2/16/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >At this level, anything goes.
> >
> >JL
>
> Shouldn't that be "anything go's"?
>
> LH
>
> >
> >On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 8:31 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
> >
> >>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >>  -----------------------
> >>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >>  Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> >>  Subject:      Re: "I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently
> >>  packed
> >>               in."
> >>
> >>
>
> >>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >>
> >>  But shouldn't possessive "that + s" be spelled without the apostrophe,
> by
> >>  analogy with the other possessive pronouns--"its," "hers," "his,"
> "ours,"
> >>  "whose"?
> >>
> >>  --Charlie
> >>
> >>  ________________________________________
> >>  From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> Joel
> >>  S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
> >>  Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 10:57 PM
> >>
> >>
>
> >>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >>
> >>  At 2/15/2011 05:45 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >>  >I mentioned this some years ago. I had a freshman in the early '80s
> who
> >>  >insisted that "that's" was correct because "whose" referred to people.
> >>
> >>  Whose what I would have said.  And I would have said "whose".
> >>
> >>  Joel
> >>
> >>  ------------------------------------------------------------
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> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >--
> >"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
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>
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