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Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010that's = of which
This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" used to mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity announcer introducing a prog about the Yellowstone National Park. Assuming it came naturally, and wasn't just a slip, is this usage as recent as it seems to me? It doesn't appear to be in OED, and I shrink from the heavy task of Googling it and having to winnow any examples from the mass of "that is" uses.  SignatureMike. >This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" used to >mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity announcer [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >of Googling it and having to winnow any examples from the mass of "that >is" uses. It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please could you contextualise it in a sentence? SignatureKaty Jennison spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @ > It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please could > you contextualise it in a sentence? He's talking about the possessive relative pronoun. Something like: Yellowstone is a park whose boundaries cross state lines. becomes: Yellowstone is a park that's boundaries cross state lines. I'd say I've heard this most of my life, but never in educated usage. ¬R >> It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please could >> you contextualise it in a sentence? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > >I'd say I've heard this most of my life, but never in educated usage. Ah! Thanks. Hmm. I can't remember having heard it, but if I did I think I'd assume that the speaker had started a sentence which was going to say ".. is a park that crosses state lines..." and decided in mid-stream to change it. SignatureKaty Jennison spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @ >> It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please could >> you contextualise it in a sentence? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > >I'd say I've heard this most of my life, but never in educated usage. It doesn't seem unusual to me, but I probably wouldn't use it. It might be used because "whose" is assumed to be usable in relation to a person or animal only. SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english) >>> It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please could >>> you contextualise it in a sentence? [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > It might be used because "whose" is assumed to be usable in relation to > a person or animal only. It is? Who assumes that?? >>>> It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please could >>>> you contextualise it in a sentence? [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > >It is? Who assumes that?? I'm suggesting that the person who uses "that's" is assuming that. SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english) >>>>> It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please >>>>> could you contextualise it in a sentence? [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] >> > I'm suggesting that the person who uses "that's" is assuming that. And it is a widespread superstition in, I think, Norte-America. IIRC, the idiot who threw up M$ Word's grammar-checker shares it. SignatureMike. >>>>>> It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please >>>>>> could you contextualise it in a sentence? [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] >And it is a widespread superstition in, I think, Norte-America. IIRC, >the idiot who threw up M$ Word's grammar-checker shares it. When all that's said, "that's" is a regularly formed possessive of "that" regardless of whether it is fashionable (er, idiomatic) in educated English. "Educated English"? Just how does one educate a language? SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english) > > It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please could > > you contextualise it in a sentence? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > I'd say I've heard this most of my life, but never in educated usage. Brilliant. A search for "that's boundaries" finds some. "Its a Manhattan neighborhood that's boundaries are Houston Street to the south, 8th Avenue to the north, the Bowery and Third Avenue on the east, and Broadway on the west." http://www.nycbynatives.com/nyc_info/new_york_city_slang.php "The journey is into a wondrous land that's boundaries are of the imagination." http://media.www.dailyorange.com/media/storage/paper522/news/2009/10/07/Feature/ PopCulture.Class.Puts.Students.In.The.zone-3795214.shtml Both of those are from New York State. We could look at some more to see whether there's a trend. -- Jerry Friedman > > > It's probably my stupidity, but I haven't quite got it: please could > > > you contextualise it in a sentence? [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > Both of those are from New York State. We could look at some more to > see whether there's a trend. This one may not be quite so much from New York: "Located in Towns County Georgia, Hiawassee is a quaint mountain town that's boundaries weave their way around the coves and bays of Lake Chatuge." http://blueridgemountainchamber.com/Hiawassee__GA.html I'm sure people want examples from books. "Figure 1-12 shows a sample of an object that's center is not where you might expect." /The QuarkXPress Book/ (1991), David Blatner, Keith Stimely, Stephen F. Roth, p. 55. http://books.google.com/books?q=%22that%27s+center%22&btnG=Search+Books This linguistics book says sentences such as "This is the house that's roof fell in" "have been collected from informal speech in Scotland, the USA, and Northern Ireland". /Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation/ (1985), James Milroy, Lesley Milroy, p. 57. http://books.google.com/books?id=0NoNAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA75#v=onepage&q=&f=false Well, I was going to call Jesse Sheidlower's attention to this, but the OE Dictionaires must know about this form if it's been in linguistics books for so long. Maybe they decided that it's not common enough to include or that it's just an error. -- Jerry Friedman > This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" used to > mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity announcer [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > of Googling it and having to winnow any examples from the mass of "that > is" uses. I need more of an example, please, to grasp the question. If you can't remember the announcer's exact words, a similar construction would do. SignatureBest -- Donna Richoux >> This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" >> used to mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > I need more of an example, please, to grasp the question. If you can't > remember the announcer's exact words, a similar construction would do. Glenn's example was spot on: "Yellowstone is a park that's boundaries cross state lines." SignatureMike. On Feb 24, 1:23 pm, "Mike Lyle" <mike_lyle...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote: > This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" used to > mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity announcer [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > of Googling it and having to winnow any examples from the mass of "that > is" uses. I think I may have heard it occasionally. In keeping with the discussion in the calendar thread about possessive pronouns with and without apostrophes, maybe it should be spelled "thats". Speaking of possessives, today a co-worker said something very much like "He can get any WiFi on the street that's up's signal." Only I wasn't sure I heard the 's, and she may have had some other construction in mind. -- Jerry Friedman > This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" used to > mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity announcer [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > of Googling it and having to winnow any examples from the mass of "that > is" uses. It depends on whether, in the context of what the announcer was saying about Yellowstone Park, referred to animals (or other objects) or to people. The relative pronouns 'that' or 'which' are applied to things: "The clothes that she was wearing, the spectacles that I lost". 'Who, whose', whom are applied to people. Often, 'who, whose, whom' are incorrectly applied to animals, which - though living creatures, are - in terms of English, "things". Thus, it would be incorrect to say "the horse who won the race" (rather than 'that' won the race) but it would be correct to say "the man who won the race". That's my understanding, but I stand to be corrected! I think that there's a lot more 'wriggle room' in informal spontaneous speech than in formal correspondence or written academic work. David Hull, N.E. Coast of England >> This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" >> used to mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > spontaneous speech than in formal correspondence or written academic > work. And there's undoubtedly more wriggle room with "whose", which has been used about things since the time of Wyclif. It's not always best to use an "of which" construction. SignatureJames >> This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" used to >> mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity announcer [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > > That's my understanding, but I stand to be corrected! Who or whom do not apply to animals or things. Not so with whose; e.g. 'that's an idea whose time has come'. |> This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" used to |> mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity announcer [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] |"The clothes that she was wearing, the spectacles that I lost". 'Who, |whose', whom are applied to people. I have no problem applying "whose" to people, but if transcribing the speech of someone who used the above construction, I wouldn't hesitate to spell the word "thats", with no apostrophe. It's a dialect-specific word: a specifically-inanimate possessive relative pronoun. Parallel to "whose", not "who's". No need to try to force upon it a spelling that makes it look like a standard English word thats function is different. SignatureAlan Curry > In article <g4qdnXyQs4pI0hvWnZ2dnUVZ8rqdn...@eclipse.net.uk>, > > |> This evening, I think for only the second time, I heard "that's" used to > |> mean "of which" or "whose". It came from a BBC continuity announcer > |> introducing a prog about the Yellowstone National Park. ... Pondian? I'd never use "the" before "Yellowstone National Park". > |It depends on whether, in the context of what the announcer was saying > |about Yellowstone Park, referred to animals (or other objects) or to [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > It's a dialect-specific word: What dialect? The book I quoted mentioned examples from the U.S., Scotland, and Northern Ireland. > a specifically-inanimate possessive relative pronoun. Usually inanimate. "If I remember correctly I knew someone that's friend was killed by lighting and i guess they were together when it happened." ("Lightning", that is.) http://kerimikulski.blogspot.com/2008/07/lightening-strikes.html > Parallel to "whose", not "who's". No need to try to force upon it a > spelling that makes it look like a standard English word thats function is > different. I sympathize with this argument, but I think (with no data) that given how rare this word is, probably more people would recognize it with the apostrophe. Here's one without, though: "A second misconception is that the national forest system is an unchanging monolith chiseled in granite, rather than an organism, thats boundaries, character and mission can change over time." http://www.ideasforcolorado.com/RockySyndicate.com/|_paige/Entries/2006/2/19_Bus h_budget_proposal_runs_into_a_buzzsaw.html -- Jerry Friedman >> In article <g4qdnXyQs4pI0hvWnZ2dnUVZ8rqdn...@eclipse.net.uk>, >> [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Pondian? I'd never use "the" before "Yellowstone National Park". Ah. Must be Pondian: I can't remember the Aus examples, but UK ones always seem to be "the xxx National Park". I suppose that means I should cap up "the"... [...] SignatureMike. >>> In article <g4qdnXyQs4pI0hvWnZ2dnUVZ8rqdn...@eclipse.net.uk>, >>> [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > cap up "the"... > [...] Australian national parks don't, in general, take a "the". (Now that I've said that, someone will no doubt come up with a whole list of counterexamples.) A title like "The Royal National Park" makes sense to me, because in that case the "Royal" acts as an adjective. On the other hand, in an example like "Criajingalong National Park" the first word cannot be interpreted as anything other than a name, so a leading "the" would be inappropriate. That might suggest that we need to look at the distinction between a name and a word; but I won't suggest that, for fear of reawakening a sleeping dog. SignaturePeter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org For an e-mail address, see my web page. [...] >>> Pondian? I'd never use "the" before "Yellowstone National Park". >>> [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > name and a word; but I won't suggest that, for fear of reawakening a > sleeping dog. Hmm. I wonder if it's got anything to do with the rather peculiar status of British national parks. Here, the term really means something more like "special conservation area": there can be towns, villages, farms, or commercial forests in them, and I don't think there's a requirement for any of the land to be in public ownership. The proper name element is treated as attributive, just as in "the Coventry Aldi", not as a straight name as in "Coventry Cathedral"; but I don't think I quite understand why. SignatureMike. |
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