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Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Aug 3 17:47:00 UTC 2022


I still use good ol' "whose" too, but I have to acknowledge that on Quora
"who's" definitely wins out (not counting the irrelevant copular uses,
of course).  Either that, or I just notice it more.  But then again,
there's "her's" and "their's".

LH

On Wed, Aug 3, 2022 at 1:25 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> > these days.
>
> God knows. Remember, my little quiz was given *forty* years ago!
>
> JL
>
> On Wed, Aug 3, 2022 at 12:52 PM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > "An idea -------- time has come."
> >
> > I was taught to use _whose_, back, in the 1940's and I'm sticking with
> it:
> > "... an art exhibition _whose_ theme was violence ..."
> >
> > That there's a problem makes me wonder how TF written/standard/proper
> > /formal/whatever English is taught, these days.
> >
> > Some would write:
> > "... an art exhibition(,) _the theme of which_ was violence ..."
> >
> > I wouldn't, but I don't find it peeving.
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 2:56 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Back around 1983 or '84, I drove even a few graduate students crazy by
> > > asking them to fill in the blank with a relative pronoun:
> > >
> > > "An idea -------- time has come."
> > >
> > >  In descending order, the responses were "who's," "whose," "thats,"
> > > "that's," "which's," "whiches."
> > >
> > > Some freshmen couldn't come up with anything.
> > >
> > > JL
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 12:32 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > At some point we'll be posting a phenomenon page on "that(')s" on the
> > > Yale
> > > > Grammatical Diversity Project web site (ygdp.yale.edu); the draft is
> > > done
> > > > but we kind of stopped working on everything over the summer.  Turns
> > out
> > > > there are a lot of variables for when it's more likely to turn up,
> > > although
> > > > from what I remember from the relevant surveys, geography isn't one
> of
> > > > them; mostly it has to do with animacy and syntactic frame.
> > > >
> > > > LH
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, Aug 1, 2022 at 9:15 PM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > "... an art exhibition _that's_ theme was violence ..."
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > - Wilson
> > > > > -----
> > > > > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange
> complaint
> > to
> > > > > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > > > > -Mark Twain
> > > > >
> > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > 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
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > - Wilson
> > -----
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -Mark Twain
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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
>

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


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