jutfrank
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2014
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- England
- Current Location
- England
The signature line of one of our regular members, which has been bugging me for a long time, reads like this:
I appreciate all of your help.
It's clear enough that the idea is to form a possessive of all of you but my mind finds it problematic to parse it that way. I can't help parsing all to relate to the entirety of 'your help' rather than to the entirety of 'you'.
From this, I have two questions I'd like to ask all of you:
1) Does this also seem problematic to you? If so, how much?
2) Can you think of an alternative way of rephrasing, whether in standard form or otherwise?
In non-standard English, all of y'all's seems to do the job very well, but as well as being non-standard, is heavily regional and hence highly inappropriate to teach to a learner. Other options, such as all of you guys's, are perhaps a little more universal, but certainly no less non-standard, and rather awkward, to my ear.
Any thoughts on this matter will be very much valued. Thanks.
I appreciate all of your help.
It's clear enough that the idea is to form a possessive of all of you but my mind finds it problematic to parse it that way. I can't help parsing all to relate to the entirety of 'your help' rather than to the entirety of 'you'.
From this, I have two questions I'd like to ask all of you:
1) Does this also seem problematic to you? If so, how much?
2) Can you think of an alternative way of rephrasing, whether in standard form or otherwise?
In non-standard English, all of y'all's seems to do the job very well, but as well as being non-standard, is heavily regional and hence highly inappropriate to teach to a learner. Other options, such as all of you guys's, are perhaps a little more universal, but certainly no less non-standard, and rather awkward, to my ear.
Any thoughts on this matter will be very much valued. Thanks.
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