a "thats" possessive on the national news

[Joel S. Berson]

I don't think I can search for "that's" in 19th Century U.S.
Newspapers -- the apostrophe gives this database fits, it seems to be
treated like a (closing) quotation mark.  (Try searching for "that's"
without quotation marks.)  No instances of "thats time has come" (quoted).

Four of "whose time has come".

Joel

At 3/26/2011 11:15 AM, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
>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.

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