|
 |
English: What’s this called? Is it wrong? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6513 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 25 03 February 2012 at 10:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
It should of course be "whose" and not "who's". "Who's" can only be the abbreviation of "who is". But the spelling is just a detail, the important thing is that the normal marker for the genitive case is used on an expression consisting of several words with an inner syntactical structure.
We have had the same discussion in Danish, where this kind of construction is quite common (and sanctioned by the powers that be*), and some grammarians have even seen it as proof that the 's' isn't an ending and thereby not an genitive marker (and maybe the genitive then doesn't even exist). The simple reality is that the language users have decided to extend the realm of the genitive marker to things that aren't substantives, but expressions. And here it fills exactly the rolle syntactically and semantically as an ending on a substantive so by inference we now have endings on expressions. * example used in a Danish grammar: Kongen af Danmarks bolcher Edited by Iversen on 03 February 2012 at 10:39am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6050 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 10 of 25 03 February 2012 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
The same example is recurring in the Swedish discussion.
Kungen av Danmarks bröstkarameller the_king('s) of Denmark('s) throat_pastilles Kungens av Danmark bröstkarameller The latter used to be recommended by "the authorities" when referring to the personal pills of the king and not to the product (a certain make of pastilles). But this is no longer the case: Svenska språknämnden (in Swedish) //aloysius 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5503 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 11 of 25 03 February 2012 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Speaking descriptively: it's interesting to think about this question. I, as a native speaker, would never say or write "It's the guy that I met on the train yesterday's" or "It's this guy I work with's", but I might possibly say "It's the guy next door's". I know "guy-next-door" and "girl-next-door" have become idiomatic adjectives in modern English, which perhaps influence my own usage pattern.
Speaking prescriptively: I would generally prefer to use a single comprehensive/explanatory noun if possible – "neighbor" and "coworker" instead of "guy next door" and "guy I work with" – but in the case of no appropriate noun being available (e.g. "the guy that I met on the train yesterday") I would switch sentence structures and say "It belongs to the guy..." or more accurately "I got it from the guy..." instead.
Don't let's forget that "who's" can also be an abbreviation of "who has", as in "Who's got the remote?" Edited by Jinx on 03 February 2012 at 2:33pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6513 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 25 03 February 2012 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The first version is totally devoid of logic (two markers in on sentence is one too many), the second is logical but I doubt that any native Swede would use it - even if he/she were referring to the king's personal candy container. The only reason to avoid "Kungen av Danmark's bröstkarameller" would be that the king might prefer another kind of pastilles than the one called "Kungen av Danmark's bröstkarameller". Or - in Denmark - "Kongen af Danmarks bolcher". And for those of you who wonder what the heck we are speaking about: the kind of candy under discussion here were invented for king Christian V, who had a sore throat and was prescribed a remedy built on anise. But it was to strong for the poor man so he had it coated in sugar. And since then it has been possible to buy red drops with a penetrating taste of anise. Well, I haven't seen it recently in the shops, but in my youth it was still quite common (spoken by a surviving candy gnashing dinosaur). Maybe it went out of fashion when we got a queen instead of a king.
I forgot. Thanks for reviving my memory. Edited by Iversen on 03 February 2012 at 3:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4509 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 13 of 25 04 February 2012 at 1:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm pretty sure that "it's the guy next door's book." isn't wrong. Why do you think it's wrong?
I never understood why it's supposed to be written this way. "Who's" and "it's" would make much more sense. Edited by LaughingChimp on 04 February 2012 at 1:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6719 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 25 04 February 2012 at 2:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not a native speaker but it really does sound awkward (and I would rephrase it). Hyphens help ("It's the guy-next-door's book") to show the "unit" idea, but theoretically such noun phrases have no limit, e.g. Is this the guy-you-met-yesterday-who-plays-football's car?
They would make sense if there was no ambiguity since an apostrophe after pronouns replaces "is" or "has" (he is, she is). In a couple of hundred years we'll know if the orthography has changed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6247 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 15 of 25 04 February 2012 at 2:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Agreed, but yes, it really is that way. An apostrophe replaces missing letters. It's = it is. The apostrophe is the "i" in "is." Its = no missing letters = no apostrophe Who's = who is. The apostrophe is the "i" in "is." Whose = possessive It's confusing because when you make something else plural, you add an apostrophe S. "It's Mike's book." There are no missing letters. It would make sense that the apostrophe S is what makes it possessive. But then you get confused because "its" (no apostrophe) is possessive. Why isn't it "it's?" That's how every other noun gets possession! Apostrophes also take the place of missing letters in contractions. Can't = can not. The apostrophe is the "no" in "not." In my personal opinion, I also think an apostrophe S should be used to denote plural of acronyms. (It's a common mistake for people to use an apostrophe S to make a regular noun plural, such as "did you get the book's at the store?" That's just wrong) For example, plural of CD is CDs. But CD's is more clear. It should also be used to make singular letters plural. For example, if you are talking about the number of times the letter E appears in the word "keeper," you should say "there are three E's in the word 'keeper'." Not "there are three Es in the word 'keeper'" because "Es" looks like a proper noun. Note that using an apostrophe S in this case is technically wrong, I just think we should do it. Apparently there is one case in English when an apostrophe S makes a word plural:
How stupid and inconsistent. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4498 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 16 of 25 07 February 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
FWIW, "the-guy-next-door's book," as noted, is accepted in colloquial speech. For my $.02, it is, according to "official" grammar, incorrect, but don't let that bother you (since it doesn't bother anyone else). When you write "door's" it means possessive of the door, not the guy. Some of the other examples seemed a little more awkward, also.
Another way of speaking colloquially that is less prone to becoming awkward is to say - "The guy next door, it's his book." I think I'm more likely to use this approach than that of the OP. The first part could be the answer to a slightly different, but equivalent question, "To whom does the book belong?" and thus provides the requested information. The second part ties it all together with the exact nuance required by the question. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
