"all the faster'

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jun 25, 2005, at 10:50 AM, Larry Horn wrote:

> At 8:04 AM -0700 6/25/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>> OED seems not to include this common spoken construction - no
>> surprise, since I was told in junior high English that it was at
>> least as revolting as "irregardless" and must never be spoken or
>> written on pain of lofty disdain.

and since there is a proscription against the construction, it gets
an entry in MWDEU, under "all the".  MWDEU discusses two different
constructions: "all the" plus comparative adverb or adjective,
functioning as a simple intensifier ("they will like you all the
better"), which is standard written english; and "all the" plus
positive or comparative adjective/adverb, replacing written "as...
as" ("that's all the tighter I can tie it"), which seems to be spoken
and regional (and american).  on the second, MWDEU cites DARE and a
december 1953 article in American Speech.

DARE has it both with the positive degree -- "that's all the fast
this horse can run" -- said to be especially common in southern and
south midland speech, and with the comparative degree (the
construction we're discussing here), said to be especially common in
inland northern and north midland speech.  (i find the positive
examples completely beyond the pale, but who am i to deny s/smidl
speakers their syntax?)

the handbooks seem to think that "all the father/further" is
particularly common.

MWDEU had no record of it in written english, except in reports of
speech.  note than jon lighter's example (below) is from film dialogue.

>> I doubt that this ex. is particularly early, but it's a start:
>>
>> 1935 Doyle Laird & Wallace Smith _Bordertown_ (film) : Is this all
>> the faster this Model T will go?
>>
>> In other words, "as fast as."
>
> or "the fastest".  (Note that it only substitutes for "as fast as" in
> the above construction, not in e.g. "X is/drives as fast as Y".)

yes, there's a lot we don't know about the external syntax of this
construction.  i find it pretty good in questions -- it takes me a
moment to remember that some people object to "is that all the faster
(that) the car can/will go?" -- but somewhat less good in
declaratives like "that's all the faster (that) the car can/will
go".  see below for more discussion.

> Unlike listmates Geoff Nunberg and Arnold Zwicky, I'm no syntactician
> (nor do I even play one on TV),

i'm a syntactician, but i've never played one on tv.  i have played
Dr. Slang on tv (very briefly, on Columbus Qube cable, back in the
cretaceous period) and Dr. Menu Language (on several tv stations,
again very briefly, and also back in the cretaceous), but never Dr.
Syntax.  not a tremendlously sexy role, i'm afraid.

> but I'd catalogue the relevant
> construction as "all the X", where X is a comparative, not as "all
> the faster" specifically; cf. "all the better", "all the odder", "all
> the more",...

yes, of course.  in addition, the following clause appears to be part
of the construction: "that's all the faster *(that) the car will go*".

>   Of course it might be argued that these represent
> different constructions, rather than examples of the same syntactic
> process.

i find very big differences between different adverbs/adjectives.
"all the faster" and "all the further" are really good for me, but
some others are marginal at best: "is that all the bigger (that) your
dog got to be?" and (big ugh) "is that all the clearer (that) you can
write?", for instance.  this would be the hallmark of a construction
that begins with a few very specific types of examples -- maybe just
one formulaic expression -- and then spreads, often slowly, to others.

as to the comparative form of the adverb/adjective, i find
inflectional comparatives (as in the examples above) hugely better
than periphrastic comparatives: worse "is that all the more seductive
(that) you can act?" vs. better "is that all the sexier (that) you
can act?"

as to the clause that follows the adverb/adjective, it looks like a
relative clause, since it has a gap in it: "(that) the car will go
__", with a missing adverbial following the verb of the clause;
"(that) your dog got to be __", with a missing predicative following
the copula.  the relative can be a that-relative or a zero-relative,
but not (i think) a wh-relative: ??"is that all the faster which the
car can go".  these characteristics are shared by the relative
clauses of (standard) superlative constructions, as in "that's the
fastest (that) this car can/will go" vs. ??"that's the fastest which
this car can/will go".  i'd speculate that the (standard) superlative
was in fact one of the contributing constructions in the development
of this (nonstandard) comparative.

but of course comparison with "as... as" also involves a gap: " [as
fast] [as the car will go __]"  if it weren't for the "all", in fact,
the nonstandard comparative would look like a complex blend of the
nonstandard superlative with "as"-comparison (with the comparative
*form* of the adverb/adjective motivated by the semantics).

finally, all the usual examples are cleftoid, involving clauses with
a pronominal (and referential) subject "that"/"this"/"it"  and a
predicative VP with the comparative AP in it.  attempts to use these
nonstandard comparative APs in other contexts yields really weird
stuff: "he always drives all the faster (that) he can" -- though "he
always drives the fastest (that) he can" and "he always drives as
fast as he can" are both fine.  so the cleftoid structure seems to be
part of the construction too.

> The OED does have under sense 1 of the adv. use of "the":
>
> ==========
> Preceding an adjective or adverb in the comparative degree, the two
> words forming an adverbial phrase modifying the predicate.
> The radical meaning is 'in or by that', 'in or by so much', e.g. 'if
> you sow them now, they will come up the sooner'; 'he has had a
> holiday, and looks the better', to which the pleonastic 'for it' has
> been added, and the sentence at length turned into 'he looks the
> better for his holiday'
> ========
>
> but that doesn't explain the "all" before the "the".

not directly.  but it suggests a possible source.  things like "he
looks the better for his holiday in cancun" are naturally expanded
with intensifier "all" (as in "he looks all depressed").  in fact, my
guess is that this use of the comparative is particularly likely to
occur with intensifier "all" ("he looks all the better for his
holiday in cancun"); this is something that corpus mavens could
easily look at.  we'd then have three contributing constructions:
    "all the" A-comparative
    "the" A-superlative + Relative-with-A-gap
    "as" A-positive "as" Clause-with-A-gap

>> How would one describe or account for the underlying grammar here ?
>> Is there a syntactician in the house ?  (Goak.)
>
> arnold, what sayest thou?  Seems like something that Construction
> Grammarians might have looked at, but I don't have any on me to ask.

well, i've given you my thoughts on the matter. (much of the above
involves my own judgments on examples.  it's time for someone to comb
corpora and for someone to collect judgments.  there is clearly some
interesting variation going on here. and an interesting puzzle for
diachronic syntax.)   i don't recall anything published on the
construction, but i could easily have failed to notice it.  i'm
sending a copy of this to a constructional grammarian in the berkeley
tradition, in the hope that she will know if it's been discussed in
print by syntacticians.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)