Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 August 31

= August 31 =

What would a division of geologic time named for New York be called?
The New Yorkian or New Yorkan? The Permian, Cambrian, Devonian, Pennsylvanian and Mississippian periods suggest it would be the former. The Wisconsin, Illinoian and Kansan and Nebraskan divisions of the Quaternary suggest New York or New Yorkan. Why isn't it Wisconsinan glaciation or Wisconsinian glaciation? They made an exception for brevity? What about the other states where -(i)an would be weird like Maine? Would it be called the Mainian or Mainan? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:20, 31 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Well, "they" just looked it up in the 137th edition of the monumental How to make up Scientific Names Right, published by authority, and that's what it told them to do. ColinFine (talk) 15:37, 31 August 2022 (UTC)


 * The names seem to follow established traditions of making adjectives from place names, which like every single other thing in Linguistics does not follow rigid rules, but rather loose trends. Merely because any arbitrary number of words follows a pattern you might have noticed, does not mean that every word in some category is required to follow the same rules.  This is apophenia, and is a common problem that all humans have; extrapolating a pattern from a limited set of data does not mean the pattern must exist for all data.  If there were to be a geologic time period named for New York, the person or people who established it would come up with their own name based on whatever they felt like doing at the time, and if enough other people accepted it as the name, it would just become the name.  Heck, go all latin with it and call it "Novoeboracumian" or some such.  Unless the term exists, we can't tell you what it should be.  -- Jayron 32 15:56, 31 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Sagittarian_Milky_Way -- If you want to be semi-correctly Latin, it might be the Novo-Eboracan, or possibly the Noveboracensian... -- AnonMoos (talk) 17:05, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary has an entry for New Yorkian with several quotations attesting its use. For Maine, one could use Mainiac :). --Lambiam 09:07, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It should be noted that in cases where there is not a clear non-human-based adjectival form (places often have both human (New Yorker) and non-human (New Yorkian) adjectival forms), English has a highly productive way of creating new adjectives. It is called the noun adjunct.  Basically, you use the unaltered form of the noun as an adjective.  This kind of usage happens commonly in all forms and dialects of English, and works well.  Even SMW has an example in the OP, with the use of "Wisconsin" as the adjectival form of "Wisconsin".  -- Jayron 32 12:02, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

That's as an inanimate relative pronoun
We have an article on the inanimate whose (e.g. "That's the car whose alarm keeps waking us up at night."), where its pros and cons are discussed. It talks about workarounds such as "That's the car of which the alarm keeps waking us up at night." Nowhere does it make any mention of alternatives such as "that's", and that's not surprising since I've never come across such a usage. That is, until last night, when I was reading Jim Crace's book Arcadia (1992). I was new to Crace, but his writing is so beautiful and evocative that I will certainly be reading more of his books. Which makes it so surprising to come across the following sentence:
 * "He had in his pocket an old flick-knife that's spring was slow and temperamental." (ch. 1, p. 10. Picador ed.)

I had to read it a few times to get the sense of what he was saying. I note that he has lived in Birmingham and Warwickshire, so I ask whether that's as a relative pronoun is part of the local idiolect, and are there any other examples from notable writers? --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:26, 31 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Well I've never heard that usage in my 25 years in Birmingham. It sounds awkward to me. I would probably render that as "flick-knife; its spring was slow..." or recast such sentences. Shantavira|feed me 08:26, 1 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I've never come across this anywhere. The Old English neuter pronoun þæt (whence today's ) had the genitive form þæs (presumably by assimilation from *þæts), which had an obsolete English descendant, thes. If we were to revive this in modern form, the spelling thats without apostrophe, analogous to its, would seem preferable, not only by analogy (compare also whose, not who's) and on historical grounds, but also to avoid confusion with the common contractions of that is and that has. --Lambiam 08:57, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Lambiam -- Old English -t as a neuter suffix occurred only in the singular of the nominative and accusative cases, and is the descendent of an Indo-European "-d" suffix, which also only occurred in the neuter nominative/accusative singular of pronominal words (as in Latin "is, ea, id"). The genitive case just used a different suffix; there's no dropping of t/d there... AnonMoos (talk) 00:05, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It sounds perfectly normal to me as a native of the Black Country. I wouldn't be surprised if it's more of a spoken rather than written usage. - X201 (talk)
 * Thanks. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  08:22, 2 September 2022 (UTC)


 * This discussion has some comments which themselves are relevant, and cite additional sources. While in "formal standard English" (a somewhat artificial dialect), the use of "that's" as a possessive form of "that" is not used, it is common in many other dialects.  The standard possessive of "that" is either "which" or "whose"; some excessively pedantic uses will avoid "whose" with inanimate objects and use "which" in those cases.  Notably, because "that's" is nonstandard, most style guides don't deal with it... While analogy to other similar possessive pronouns like "its" and "hers" would suggest an apostrophe-less "thats", there is no agreement on this, and either "that's" or "thats" is used.  In many American dialects, the possessive "thats" is common and unmarked, except in formal writing or speaking.-- Jayron 32 10:52, 1 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Fascinating blog. So it's far from unheard of, but I won't be using it any time soon. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  08:22, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * You don't have to. Linguistics and language studies are never meant to be proscriptive or prescriptive, merely descriptive.  You should use whatever language variety feels natural and comfortable given your particular social or cultural context; so long as you afford every other person the same courtesy, there's not ever going to be any problems.  -- Jayron 32 14:18, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I rest secure in your imprimatur. Deo gratias. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:27, 2 September 2022 (UTC)