[Ads-l] Heard: "thats" < _whose_

[Jonathan Lighter]

For any newcomers here, I brought this up many years ago.

After I found it in a student theme, I did a little research and discovered
that even some *graduate students in English* would write it in the blank
in "This is an idea ______ time has come" and similar sentences.

It was ca1984.

JL

On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 12:34 AM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 11:48 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 'Monsters Inside Me,' the narrator speaks:
> >
> > "The source of the rash is diagnosed as poison oak, a plant _thats_
> leaves
> > can cause an allergic reaction."
> >
> > The rash was, in fact, a symptom of schistosomiasis.
> >
> > Youneverknow.
> >
>
> Reminiscent of a similar example Wilson brought to our attention back in
> 2011: "I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently packed in."
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2011-
> February/thread.html#106816
>
>
> That thread inspired Neal Whitman to write about "that's" in this piece for
> the Visual Thesaurus:
>
> https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/gear-up-for-
> national-grammar-day/
>
> James Harbeck in turn picked up on this, writing about apostrophe-less
> "thats" used as a relative possessive pronoun.
>
> https://theweek.com/articles/441268/future-english-
> includes-apostropheless-thats
>
> --bgz
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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