Judy said:
> Look, guys, I just wanna find out which room is the mens' room and which
> room is the womens' room---or maybe theirs a persons' room---or, no, a
> peoples' room. In one more minutes' time, its just gonna be too late!!!!
> And, likely, YOUR gonna be too blame!!!
See, whaw yi wanna do iz go tae the Continong -- aw the cludgies their is
unsex.
In an odd way, this is ghosting a slightly more serious take on this in an
on-going argument between Bob Grumman and myself on New Poetry involving
inter alia "Are homophones significant, and if so, how?"
The problematic of its/it's (etc.) only exists when language is written
down. Spoken, "ours", "hours", "hour's" and "hours'", even "our's", are
identical in sound.
Actually, this is beginning to do my brains in, especially so soon after
tangling with Bob over the issue.
Robin
> GrammaG
>
>
> From: "Robin Hamilton"
>
>
> > From: "Jon Corelis" <[log in to unmask]>
> >
> >> One is the use of it's as a possessive, as in "This table has one of
it's
> >> legs too short."
> >
> > I think this drifts-in because most possessives (though not pronouns
like
> > "its") are signalled by an apostrophe. It's not simply a gratuitous
error
> > (few are), but in a horrible way emerges from the pressure of the
overall
> > orthographic system of English.
> >
> > Which makes me wonder why this *hasn't* (as far as I know) happened to
> > "your's", "our's" and "their's" (or "yours'", "ours'" and "theirs'").
> >
> > It's poor old "it is" that I really feel sorry for -- rapidly having its
> > orthographic identity swallowed up by a mere possessive pronoun.
> >
> > Robin
> >
> > (Whose hour's space of time is short)
> >
> > [Whose? Ours? Space of time is short!]
> >
> > {Who's ours? Space of time, off course.}
> >
>
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