[Ads-l] Possessive plurals

[Laurence Horn]

> On Jun 7, 2023, at 2:06 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> He's still doing it, even putting up on the screen for us "the cats's" and
> "the humans's."
> 
> JL

And presumably "the foxes’s” (= “fak-siziz”) and "the lynxes’s" (“link-siziz”)


> 
> On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 12:02 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> I've been watching these Latin lessons on YouTube:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWUlrL6E_QU
>> 
>> The instructor (a native speaker of English evidently, and
>> youthful-sounding)  is clearly well educated, and he knows Latin.
>> 
>> However, he says "abLAYtive" instead of "ABlative." He also talks about
>> "female," "male," and "neutral" nouns instead of masculine, feminine, and
>> neuter. More to the point, though, he routinely pronounces English
>> possessive plurals with an excrescent "iz."
>> 
>> Exx: students' > "studentsiz"
>>        soldiers'   > "soldierziz."
>> 
>> Is this something we should be doing? Or is it just a pedagogical
>> stratagem?
>> 
>> JL
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "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

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