[Ads-l] Possessive plurals

Mon Jun 26 16:10:34 UTC 2023

Here is an instance of “you guyses” in 1899 appearing within a passage
which uses nonstandard spelling.

Date: Oct 29, 1899
Newspaper: The Salt Lake Herald
Newspaper Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Article: New Yorker's Peril With Ogden Maniacs
Quote Page 7, Column 3
Database: GenealogyBank

[Begin excerpt - please double check]
Then we were lead to the stream running ice cold water and told to
wash our own heads. We did so mid smarts and oaths and revengeance
swearing. Then the voice of Gus was again heard over all, exclaiming:
"Here, you guyses; brink me a towel, mine head to put ar-rr-ound. Vad
you dink, it's kold aind id: you succors?"
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 10:54 AM Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I can't beat that, but there's this:
>
> 1971 Columbus [Ga.] Enquirer (May 7) 1: One writer from Kenosha, Wis.,
> purports to have documented proof of Calley's innocence. ...The shadows of
> the killers came from the North...and "you guyses (sic) shadows would have
> come from the South."
>
> JL
>
> On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 1:14 AM James Eric Lawson <jel at nventure.com> wrote:
>
> > 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
> > >
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > --
> > James Eric Lawson
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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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