[Ads-l] Possessive plurals

[James Eric Lawson]

Antedating?

1993  *Chicago Tribune* (Chicago, Illinois) 31 Oct 27 (newspapers.com) 
I do your guyses’ job for you.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/chicago-tribune-guyses/127113684/

The possessive apostrophe is likely a bonus from the reporter or editor.


With the standard disclaimer (for what it's worth), "your guyses" was 
frequent among the colloquial speakers (as opposed to the academic 
types) I consorted with in Minnesota in the 1970s and 1980s.



On 6/25/23 16:36, Barretts Mail wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
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-- 
James Eric Lawson

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