Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 April 19

= April 19 =

Migratory possessive
This is a rather silly question, but I'm mainly wondering whether any academic studies treat this matter. There's a commercial on U.S. TV for some prescription drug, featuring Arnold Palmer and two other guys as shills. The last line spoken by Palmer is "Like your guys(') score", referring to the supposed bad golf scores of the other guys. (There's no telling whether he's treating guys as possessive, since the pronunciation would be the same either way.) Now, personally, I would treat "you guys" as a unit and say or write "Like you guys' scores"—note the plural scores—as a Southerner would presumably say "Like y'all's scores". I assume that Palmer is just saying what he was told to say, but the question is, Has any linguistic scholar noted this sort of use of the possessive (personal) pronoun when one would expect only the following word to be possessive in form? I'm finding it a hard thing to search for. Deor (talk) 02:58, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I have increasingly heard "your guys" as the possessive form of "you guys" during the last ten or twenty years, and frankly it's an abomination, but that's English for ya. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It's either that or youse guys's. Take your pick. μηδείς (talk)
 * What's wrong with "you guys's"? That's what I probably say in Californian.  But having lived for a time in Texas, I learned a better alternative, "y'all's", which I use from time to time.  (Though to be honest, I rarely use it to ascribe possession to a group of specific individuals &mdash; I use it more to distinguish "your detergent" (the clerk's) from "y'all's detergent" (the detergent belonging or appertaining to the store at which the clerk works).) --Trovatore (talk) 05:45, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
 * "Youse guys" is a Philly-NYC Plural and the possessive is youse guys's, . μηδείς (talk) 05:14, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
 * "Like you guys' scores" is nonsense English. "Like your guys' (or guy's) scores" is perfectly acceptable, assuming that the first person pronoun "I" is left out (which is common) and you are talking to the manager and not the guys themselves. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 07:30, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, took me a while to understand it. I suppose it's possible, as in "You people's attitude towards..." could be used. In the example that Deor has said, I believe it should be plural, as "You guy" is not a phrase in the singular, whereas "You guys" is perfectly normal. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 07:36, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I've normally heard it when someone is addressing a group, like in a meeting, and says "your guys stuff" instead of "you guys' stuff". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:10, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I just saw that commercial for Xarelto five seconds ago, and at the end Arnold Palmer says to Kevin Nealon and Brian Vickers, "Like your guys' scores." Palmer did use the plural scores. (video)  → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 19:47, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Yep, that's an example. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:39, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * You're right, Michael J, and I was wrong. I failed to pick that up when sitting across the room from my TV set. Doesn't change the main question about "your guys", though. Deor (talk) 10:22, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * The Grammarphobia Blog suggests that "your guys" comes about by analyzing "you guys" as two words in apposition. I'm not 100% convinced this is the correct analysis, but it is plausible.  Either way, the existence of the blog post serves as evidence that the phenomenon has been discussed by at least some people who write books about English grammar.  --Amble (talk) 23:30, 19 April 2015 (UTC)


 * What's going on here is that in some varieties of English (including my own, when in a familiar and not professional context), you guys is a 2nd person plural pronoun. (It may once have been used only when speaking to males, but it has become gender-neutral.) In this construct, guys is a particle or modifier that makes you plural. The possessive form of you is of course your.  The base form in your guys is your.  Guys is tacked on to indicate a plural number.  I agree that, from the perspective of standard English, this is an awkward form.  That said, I have probably used it because it solves a problem in standard English.  That is, there is no possessive pronoun to use, when speaking to more than one person, to indicate that something belongs to more than one of them.  Marco polo (talk) 15:05, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Except there is: You guys' is the proper possessive. Your guys is not. And I've often heard it said in business meetings, whether that constitutes a professional context or not. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * English is very rare in that the modern standards of RP and SAE don't have a common number or politeness distinction with the second person. This is almost unheard of in most languages.  Hence the situation is in flux.  I see no point in getting worried about it.  I saw the Palmer commercial before it was mentioned here, and as a stickler for most things I didn't even flinch. μηδείς (talk) 21:48, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Xarelto Commercial 2015 Kevin Nealon, Brian Vickers (YouTube) Bus stop (talk) 05:26, 25 April 2015 (UTC)