More on "what's" (was: Re: excrescent 's)

[Laurence Horn]

On Jun 9, 2012, at 11:01 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:

> on my blog, citing ADS-L:
>
> http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/excrescent-s/
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


Speaking of "what's":

This is more a more subtle shift than the ones Arnold writes about, but I've been noticing an odd (to me!) use of "what's" in edited prose.  For me, the clitic in "what's" is unremarkable in two different contexts, one of course with the elided copula ("What's he/she/it doing now?") and one with the elided perfect auxiliary ("What's he/she done now?").  But one of Apple's ads for iPhone4 and Siri reads

"What's my day look like?"

(I've seen this on the back of New Yorkers and I think on TV commercials as well, although I'm not sure of that.)

For me, "What's your day look like?" or maybe "What's he do for a living?" are maybe possible allegro speech utterances but it seems one step farther away from written edited English than the "What has…" or "What is…" values of "What's".  I wonder if there's any kind of synergy with the greater acceptance or recognition of "that(')s".

If this has been blogged, sorry for being late to the party--but what's it really matter anyway?

LH

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org