[Ads-l] Possessive plurals

[Barretts Mail]

FWIW “Your guys’s way” is the form I use. “You guys’s” sounds ungrammatical regardless of how it may be parsed with logic. I distinctly recall pondering this some months ago when writing an email and decided that “your guys’s” is the only form that sounds grammatical to me. 

Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_guys) calls my usage "nonstandard, limited to colloquial or dialectal speech.”

Napoleon Dynamite is therefore also nonstandard and according to “The Cut,” Ben Pagoda has found a citation from 2002, the earliest instance of this nonstandard usage (https://www.thecut.com/2016/11/your-guys-is-american-english-at-it-roughspun-best.html). 

There are opinions both ways on the English Stack Exchange (https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12277/what-is-the-possessive-of-you-guys).

Benjamin Barrett (he/his/him)
Formerly of Seattle, WA

> On Jun 25, 2023, at 13:22, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> "You guys's" would seem to be sufficient for the Inglish of Tomorrow, but
> "YOUR guys's" is a little much.
> 
> It seems to me that when I was very young - say, five - I may have used
> some "-s's" forms.
> 
> But if so, I soon got over it.
> 
> JL
> 
> On Sun, Jun 25, 2023 at 2:31 PM Betty Birner <bbirner at niu.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Friday night our (young) waiter said, “Can I get this board out of your
>> guys’s way?”  Pronounced [gaizəz].  And honestly, I’m sure I’ve heard "your
>> guys's" many times, and may have even uttered it myself.  FWIW, I'm about
>> an hour north of Chicago.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of
>> Jonathan Lighter
>> Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2023 3:42 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: Possessive plurals
>> 
>> External Email. Think before you click or reply.
>> 
>> Cf. "your guys's garage" (Apr. 24).
>> 
>> JL
>> 
>> On Wed, Jun 7, 2023 at 2:52 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>>> 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
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 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
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "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