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Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Grammar
A special case of who's vs. whose?
Here is a quotation from Gary Brecher's latest "The War Nerd" article:
They say he and the Loyalist ranter Ian Paisley were the best of pals when they worked together, telling gory old jokes about who buried who’s second cousin in some bog back in the good old days.
Is this proper? I can't figure it out.
They say he and the Loyalist ranter Ian Paisley were the best of pals when they worked together, telling gory old jokes about who buried who’s second cousin in some bog back in the good old days.
Is this proper? I can't figure it out.
Top answer
Anonymous Is this proper? Yes. whose is a relative pronoun, so it would appear thus with a noun antecedent: The person whose second cousin is buried in a bog told a gory joke.
- Anonymous Is this proper?
- Yes.
- whose is a relative pronoun, so it would appear thus with a noun antecedent: The person whose second cousin is buried in a bog told a gory joke.
- That's not the case here.
- Here you need the possessive with the apostrophe.
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4 Answers
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AnonymousIs this proper?Yes. whose is a relative pronoun, so it would appear thus with a noun antecedent:
The person whose second cousin is buried in a bog told a gory joke.
That's not the case here. Here you need the possessive with the apostrophe.
Make sense now?
CJ
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This one was weird for me, too, until I thought through it as as "my second cousin" "his second cousin" "wait.. the second cousin of who(m)?" -- making it "who's cousin?"
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