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

[Laurence Horn]

> On 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
> 
> ——————————————————————————————

We have a page on _thats_/_that’s_ almost ready for prime time at ygdp.yale.edu.

LH

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