"all" = very; quite

[Wilson Gray]

On 10/17/05, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "all" = very; quite
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Like, occupational hazard, dude !  Fo' shizz !
>
> JL
>
> "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
> Subject: Re: "all" = very; quite
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Oct 17, 2005, at 4:19 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>
> > So new that those exx. don't even sound like English to me.
>
> > ...She all walks in.
> > Yeah I all screamed when we hit the skunk...
>
> some months ago we thought we could predict that these wouldn't
> occur. then we started googling, and got tons of examples. the
> skunk example was my find, in pages and pages of examples with
> pronoun subject + "all" + manner-of-speaking verb (in simple
> present or past)
> (as Prof. Manner-of-Speaking, i got this verb class to search for).
>
> by the time the collection task got all boring, i was starting to
> find the examples not too bad, bordering on ok.
>
> arnold
>

In my late, lamented youth, the preferred form would have been " ...
got all boring _and everything_ ..."

With the exception of those two horrible examples of Jon's, in fact,
all of the examples be sounding all good (and everything) to me.

-Wilson Gray