a "thats" possessive on the national news

[Jonathan Lighter]

Google finds less than a dozen "idea which's time has come," though that was
an occasional solution among the students.

It does find 23,000 exx. of "idea which time has come," which was a quite
popular solution.

And over 300 exx. of "idea which its time has come," which I believe was the
most popular erroneous solution of all. (Very oddly, only a single hit on
"idea which it's time has come."


I long ago indicated my surprise that in many thousands of student papers
over many years (before grammar checkers and so forth), the barest
handful ever contained a double modal construction, though most of these
students were apparently saying "might could" every day.  And, less
surprising, I don't believe I saw "ain't" used seriously on more than a
single occasion.

SWAG: "inanimate obj. + poss." has always been rare in natural speech (not
sure why). That, combined with the purely theoretical discord of "whose,"
has resulted in a somewhat moribund construction in both speech and writing.

JL


On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: a "thats" possessive on the national news
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3/26/2011 11:32 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >Good work, Joel.
>
> Oh dear.  As a prescriptivist, I was just intending to show that it
> was *not* used frequently -- only about 15,000 raw (an appropriate
> adjective?) Ghits.
>
> It's a shame 19th Century U.S. Newspapers won't let "that's"
> pass.  Hidden prescriptivism?
>
> Going back to Google after this disappointment and trying "idea thats
> time has come" (quoted but no apostrophe) -- for which Google asks me
> " Did you mean: "idea that's time has come" " -- I find fewer Ghits:
> about 2,370.  And leaving off "an", "idea that's time has come" rises
> to about 25,900.  (Should these be added together?)
>
> Google News gives very few hits for "idea that's/thats time has come"
> -- but some: around 75?  (I used both "Archives" and "Custom Range".)
>
> And none in Google News / Blogs??  Whose where I would expect to find
> lot's of that's.
>
> Joel
>
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