Brett,

I don't object to anything. I'm just reporting that I would find it
unnatural in my dialect (or ideolect, although it would surprise me if I was
alone in this) to say, "Whose is this WALLET?" However, I would have no
trouble in saying, "Whose is THIS wallet?", as per Susan van Druten's
example.

Dick Veit

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Brett Reynolds
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> On 25-Jun-09, at 8:46 AM, Dick Veit wrote:
>
>  In my dialect, I can't say "Whose is this wallet?" (or "To whom belongs
>> this wallet?") although I probably could say, "This wallet is whose?" and
>> even "This wallet belongs to whom?"
>>
>
> This strikes me as Dick's personal idiolect. As far as I know, there is no
> generally described North America or British dialect that prohibits
> constructions such as "whose is this wallet," though Dick doesn't explain
> what he objects to so it's not exactly clear what we should be comparing.
>
> Examples of similar constructions include:
> Tom Sawyer: Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?
> The Secret Garden: There he is in the bush. Whose is he?
> The Bible: Whose is this image, and superscription?
>
> From the OED:
> Date    Author          Match
> 1748    A. Richardson   VII. lv. 194 '  Whose is this?' 'Mine, sir',
> chuffily
> 1916    H. James        Whose is it?
> 1921    P. LUBBOCK      attered facts,  whose is this new point of view? It
> i
> 1936    M. ALLINGHAM    ings Bank? ..   Whose is it?'
> 1883    D. C. MURRAY    e voice. .. ' ' Whose is it?'
> 1923    editor          perh. repr. '   whose is this?']
> 1320    ?               whose is witer and wys of wit.
>
> More recent examples from the Corpus of Current American English can be
> found here:
> <http://www.americancorpus.org/x1.asp?q=1106195>
> <http://www.americancorpus.org/x1.asp?q=1106193>
> <http://www.americancorpus.org/x1.asp?q=1106188>
>
> The last two options that Dick suggests are echo questions. In standard
> English, echo questions are usually used only in response statements (e.g.,
> a: "This wallet is his." b: "This wallet is whose?").
>
>
> Best,
> Brett
>
> -----------------------
> Brett Reynolds
> English Language Centre
> Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
> Toronto, Ontario, Canada
> [log in to unmask]
>
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