Re: CHAT: which's

My watch's broken
Rich's standing over there

Which doesn't make which's any more grammatical

David Barrow

michael poxon wrote:

> 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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