Are there such forms as this's and which's? [closed]
I've seen that's, who's, how's, etc., but I don't recall ever seeing this's and which's. Are they used very often or at all? If so, how do you pronounce them? Any differently from this is and which is?
Solution 1:
You are certainly right that contractions of this is to this's and which is to which's are far less common than contractions of who is to who's and how is to how's. The most likely explanation is also the most obvious one: Writers often use contractions to represent or replicate spoken the sound of spoken contractions—and the contraction of the two-syllable who is or how is to the one-syllable who's or how's is obvious to both the writer's ear and the reader's ear.
No such obviousness exists in connection with the contraction of the two-syllable this is or which is to the two-syllable this's or which's: the two forms sound extremely similar and undoubtedly grade into one another across a continuum from distinctness to strong slurring. The question then becomes, why would you want to represent the idea of this is with this's or the idea of which is with which's?
Lacking a strong argument that this's and which's are truer to the sound of the expression than this is and which is, one is left with a visual argument: this's looks as though it might be a good match for the kind of character who also says 'smatter instead of what's the matter, and lemme instead of let me, and th' instead of the (for example). But to judge from Google Books search results, relatively few writers find the argument for this's and which's compelling.
Interestingly, a note to a 1903 edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest uses the form this 's in act IV, scene 1, where Ferdinand says,
This 's strange : your father 's in some passion/ That workes him strongly.
A note to the text offers the following gloss:
THIS'S, etc.: the FO[LIO] reads "this is"; but "this is" was contracted into "this 's" in M.E. poetry (see Chaucer's Prologue, Knightes Tale, and Nonnes Preestes Tale, ed. Liddell, Introduction, §273, p. xcvi) and the contraction evidently survived into e.N.E. It frequently occurs in Ben Jonson, and is usually indicated in the printing of the edition of 1640, e.g., "This 's strange" (prose) Sejanus V.4, p. 378; "If 't be arrived at that he knows Or none. Agr. This 's quick! What should be his disease?" ibid., p. 338; "This 's heathen Greek to you?" Alchemist, p. 551; "This 's forraine coyne" (poetry) ibid., p. 558; cp. also "That 't seemde when heaven his modell first began, In him it shew'd perfection in aman" Drayton, 'Barrons Warres' III.40; Shakspere uses the contraction in "Why this' a heavie chance" Tam[ing] of Shr[ew] I.2.46, and in Lear IV.6.187.
Nevertheless, by the twentieth century this's was scarcely likelier to be found in contemporaneous writing than this' or that't. The resurgence (such as it is) of these forms today seems to be a product of the past 30 years or so.