a "thats" possessive on the national news

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Maybe JL and JB and NW are right and my intuitions are wrong. I can't find "idea that(')s time has come before the mid-1970s in Google Books. So maybe this is truly a very recent innovation and analogy. I would check DARE, old newspapers, NOTES AND QUERIES, and AMERICAN SPEECH before I made up my mind for sure. Has anyone done that? But It appears that earlier usage manuals do not mention this use of "that's"--not really a definitive proof that it wasn't in common use at least regionally, but suggestive. The fact that OED did not pick up on it is not necessarily probative, if it has been an American, oral, regional, usage.


Sent from my iPad

On Mar 26, 2011, at 10:47 AM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:

> At 3/26/2011 09:14 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> 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?)
>
> My experiment -- Google "an idea that's time has come"
> (quoted):  "About 15,000 results (0.23 seconds)".
>
> Perhaps an idea worth the time it took.  And repeated, it took 0.06 seconds.
>
> P.S. "An idea whose time has come" (quoted): "About 974,000 results
> (0.21 seconds)".
>
> Joel
>
>
>> 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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>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>>
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