a "thats" possessive on the national news

[Jonathan Lighter]

Good work, Joel.

JL

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 11:15 AM, <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ronbutters at AOL.COM
> Subject:      Re: a "thats" possessive on the national news
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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