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I generally hear y'alls's used as the possessive form, but I have also heard yourn. Since y'all is a colloquial pronoun, its possessive form is basically liberated from prescriptive linguistics which would probably say that y'all is a contraction for you all and therefore must be possessivized as of all of you.

Do you know if there is a "standard" way to make y'all possessive, insofar as y'all usage can be considered standard?

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  • Possible duplicate of: english.stackexchange.com/questions/8102/…
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 20:43
  • Why are there two questions here that are widely divergent? Which would you like answered?
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 20:44
  • @Jsolebrand Sorry, I meant possessive but wrote plural, which doesn't make sense anyways because y'all is already plural. It should be fixed now.
    – Peter Olson
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 20:47
  • y'all is most assuredly not plural. I've now had several people tell me I'm wrong. Go figure.
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 20:54
  • 2
    @jcolebrand When would you ever use y'all to refer to only one person?
    – Peter Olson
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 20:56

1 Answer 1

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17

It depends on whether you are indicating individual or group possession.

Did y'all get your coats?

Your is used because each person has a coat.

Is that y'all's house?

Y'all's is used because the house is theirs collectively. I never use y'alls's because y'all is already plural and doesn't need the s before the apostrophe.

For what it's worth, I'm from the Alabama and use both y'all and y'all's regularly.

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  • I agree with the logic behind the usage of your to indicate individual possession, but I don't think it always happens that way in practice. As a Tennessean, I often hear your all's or y'all's in the same place. I've never seen either forms written, but one can assume that anyone willing to make such an obviously improper grammatical construct is not going to be too concerned with the placement of an apostrophe.
    – HaL
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 21:03
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    This is about correct. I say "about" because this is very informal, loose usage at best. I also have lived in the South and have noted wide use of "y'all" and "y'all's." Singular "y'all" is illustrative, e.g., you are talking to one person, you can ask, "Is this y'all's truck?" which implies family ownership - even though other members of the family are not present. "Yourn" sounds like an Appalachianism to me.
    – The Raven
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 21:15
  • @The Raven: "Yourn" is mostly archaic in the UK, but still current in some Northern (rural/rustic?) dialects, I think.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 22:53

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