a "thats" possessive on the national news

[Jonathan Lighter]

Amazing all around.

If it's been as common for many decades as alleged, the failure of the OED
and others to notice it should give us all pause.

Shouldn't there be plenty of printed evidence in fiction?  If not, why not?

My impression is that constructions involving "inanimate obj. + poss." are
relatively uncommon in speech and writing to begin with. That would
encourage the astonishing muddle I found in graduate student attempts to use
the relevant "whose" properly  25 years ago.

Many had trouble filling in the blank in the "giveaway" ex.:

"It's an idea _____ time has come."

As I may have said once before, it's time for someone to repeat the
experiment. (If they have, what were the results?)

One might think that "...what so proudly we hailed...whose broad stripes and
bright stars" might have implanted the construction in infant minds, but
the sentence is so complicated that undoubtedly many adults still can't
figure it out.

JL

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 8:00 AM, <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ronbutters at AOL.COM
> Subject:      Re: a "thats" possessive on the national news
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have been saying this all my life. It sounds informal to me; in formal
> writing, I would have to say, "the waistline of which". But "whose" for an
> abstract or nonhuman entity sounds "wrong."
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Mar 25, 2011, at 10:39 PM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET> wrote:
>
> > Great catch!
> >
> > I wrote about my son unapologetically using possessive "that's" here:
> >
> http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/we-dont-speak-the-same-language/
> > A linguist on Twitter even tweeted "I'm with your son on that's over
> whose"
> > after reading the post. I'm amazed how strongly this analogy is catching
> on.
> >
> > Neal
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 10:04 PM
> > Subject: a "thats" possessive on the national news
> >
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> >> header -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> >> Subject:      a "thats" possessive on the national news
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> On ABC's World News Tonight tonight, reporter Ryan Owens, in Austin
> >> TX commenting on the correlation between church-going and obesity,
> >> referred to
> >>
> >> "...a megachurch thats waistline is growing as fast as its congregation"
> >>
> >> I don't think I've ever heard one of these in "mainstream" use of this
> >> kind.
> >>
> >> LH
> >>
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> >
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