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

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:30 PM -0500 2/19/11, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>Enlighten me. What was the good reason here?
>
>DanG

One reason is to avoid "whose" and pied piping, which is in a
register they don't use (at least in colloquial speech).  An
alternative is to use a relative clause with a resumptive pronoun.
This allows three choices:

That's the book whose cover is torn ("correct" formal style)
That's the book that's cover is torn (reanalyzed complementizer
serving as rel. pronoun with possessive marker)
That's the book that its cover is torn (resumptive pronoun version)

LH


>On Feb 19, 2011 6:27 PM, "Mark Mandel" <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>>  Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster: Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject: Re: "I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently packed
>>  in."
>>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  That suggests that you don't often need to use such constructions. Those
>who
>>  do, use them, and for good reason.
>>
>>  m a m
>>
>>  On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>  In written form, I would have structured the sentence differently to
>avoid
>>>  these issues.
>>>
>>>  DanG
>>>
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org