ellipsis…

dissertation, my ass.

came across a paper titled “a universal pronoun in english?” by a student of linguistics at stanford.

and the pronoun? your ass.

to quote him: “We refer to these expressions collectively as your ass. Your ass is not simply a possessive
pronoun + NP (PossNP) construction since, primarily, it is semantically non-compositional…”

one of the examples he gives: “…my ass handed the old chick her ten fuckin’ bucks…” explained as “…the speaker presumably handed the ten dollars to the woman with his hands (not his buttocks).”

read the entire thing here. it’s a downloadable pdf.

and drop by the author’s page. andrew koontz-garboden now teaches linguistics at manchester.