Recently Rachel Maddow said the following: “… voters who got knocked on their doors.”
That is substantially amazing. Standard English would have “… voters whose doors got knocked on.” Since whose is dropping out of common usage more and more, we most likely would get “… voters who they got their doors knocked on.” This latter construction is found in other languages and I hear it more and more, i.e. replacing whose.
The prescriptivists probably object to the passive in got but it is still standard. Rachel would probably classify this as a mistake rather than an error, i.e. if she saw a transcript of what she said she would realize her mistake and be able to correct it.
Still, a linguistic wonder.
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
