Craig,
In Old English, the genitive of the interrogative pronoun was "hwaes" for all genders. That's the ancestor of modern "whose." I think there is an analogical tendency to identify "whose" with "who" and "whom" on the basis of sound, and so people tend to think of "whose" as human, but historically, up into Modern English, "whose" has been gender-neutral.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 1:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "thats" for "whose"
Herb,
I never thought of the genitive of "which" as "whose." In my mind, "whose" is genitive of "who," though admittedly a form with a bit more extended range. I always thought which was like "that "in not having a genitive form. Am I outside the mainstream in that?
Craig
On 2/16/2011 1:01 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
> But then the genitive of which, like that of who, is whose, not which's. Analogical change on the basis of sound is not unheard of, but it is less common than morphological analogy, which is, I think, what's going on here.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 11:41 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: "thats" for "whose"
>
> Herb,
> It might be that we hear "that's" fairly regularly when "that"
> opens up a relative clause: "The barn that's behind my house...." It may not be a big step to "The barn that's roof we are clearing..." Which may explain why we don't hear it as aften (at all?) with "which." "Which is" won't elide to which's quite so readily.
>
> Craig
>
> On 2/16/2011 12:07 AM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>> I've run into it occasionally too, and Larry Horn is right that the complementizer "that" has to be reanalyzed as a relative pronoun for it to take a genitive suffix. This is the only sure piece of evidence I know of showing relative "that" as a pronoun.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Yates
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 11:35 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: "thats" for "whose"
>>
>> Herb,
>>
>> Over the weekend, I was reading a set of papers and had a relative that's.
>>
>> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>>
>>>>> "STAHLKE, HERBERT F"<[log in to unmask]> 02/15/11 9:57 PM>>>
>> We've had considerable discussion of relative "that" from time to time, and I thought the following exchange from ADS-L might be of interest.
>>
>> Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of English
>> Ball State University
>> Muncie, IN 47306
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society<[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter<[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>> Subject: Re: "I've a 24" 2.4Ghz iMac _that's_ hard drive recently packed
>> in."
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> --------- I mentioned this some years ago. I had a freshman in the
>> early '80s who insisted that "that's" was correct because "whose" referred to people.
>>
>> When I surveyed English Department graduate students with a fill-in-the-blank quiz, a fair number filled in the blanks with "that's"
>> instead of "whose."
>>
>> God knows what they wrote in their own papers. They were mainly working on masters' rather than doctoral degrees, if that makes anyone feel better. And did I mention that the degrees would be in English? Yeah, I guess I did.
>>
>> JL
>>
>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 4:30 PM, Laurence Horn
>>> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> it's an instance of "that" (reanalyzed from complementizer to
>>>> relative pronoun) in the genitive, as noted.
>>>>
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