Re: CHAT: which's

Er... if which's is a contraction, what's it a contraction of? It can't be
the genitive, 'cause it ain't grammatical, and -/tSz/ or -/tSs/ isn't a
valid consonant cluster in English (not off the top of my head, anyway). If
the sense intended is as in something like "The tree which is over there" I
can't see this ever contracting. Most people would contract this statement,
if at all, as "The tree that's over there". This 'which' type of relative
construction seems to be disappearing.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Arthaey Angosii" <arthaey@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: CHAT: which's


> Emaelivpaer Muke Tever:
> >But I think the restraint against /Ss/ prevents "which is" from ever
> >contracting at all.
>
> T'emaelivpar John Cowan:
> >"Which's" is never acceptable in standard English. [snip examples]
> >But the right thing for non-native speakers is simply never to use it.
>
> Personally, I'm a contraction-happy sort of person, especially online.  If
> I'm not careful, I'd've had "'cause 'cept 'specially" in my postings here,
> which's a bit of an overkill.  ;)
>
> I think it just depends on context.  If you look at my log files of IM
> chats, there are contractions everywhere.  The more grammatically "proper"
> I'm trying to be -- such as when writing less-spoken-English-like e-mails
> -- I'll try to weed out some of the less standard contractions.
>
> "Which's" would count as very informal in my book, but still acceptable.
>
>
> --
> AA

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