A nice example of how context conditions sentence level choices.
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan van Druten
Sent: 2009-06-25 10:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: question: whose wallet
Importance: Low
Another context: The swingers' party has just ended. Some had walked to the party and didn't have keys to put in the hat and had used their wallets instead. In returning the various keys and wallets, the host is calling out, "Whose is this wallet?"
On Jun 25, 2009, at 9:23 AM, Brett Reynolds 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
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