Is that really legit?

[mbarker]

Just a vagrant itch in an episode of Monk that I saw recently. Sort of a grammatical issue. Which I know I should ignore, but...

In the story, a bar con artist bets Monk that he can tell him where he got his shoes. After some wheedling, Monk agrees to bet him $50. At which point the con artist looks at his legs, and says with a straight face," You got your shoes..."  (pause for a breath)  "on your feet." Monk grimaces and shoves the $50 over to him.

You got your shoes on your feet? Surely that should be you have your shoes on your feet? And Monk doesn't even object to the poor grammar? Grumble, grumble.

Perhaps correcting grammar isn't as visually entertaining as some of Monk's other fixations. Still, it seemed a bit odd that he let this slide.

Comments

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

We had a student inform us that he was told, by a teacher, that "its' " is the possessive of a plural it.

Cringe.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

You mean in a situation referring to the three cars, one might write, "Its' headlights were broken." There is a certain seductive logic to that . . . but I don't think so.

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

You've got it. The student's tendency to engage in random acts of scattering apostrophes or leaving them out completely has been driving their college professors crazy. You might think they would have been introduced to punctuation in high school but it's not true. Punctuation would curb their creativity. Can't have that. So they graduate from high school without a clue how to structure a sentence. It's very sad.

As far as Monk's shoes go, I'm guessing the bet wouldn't have worked with other phrasing.