"all the ADJ-er"

[Wilson Gray]

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 10:23 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> Did we have a thread on these once?  I'm not sure what to look it up
> under, although I suspect it's been discussed here and/or on Language Log
> or someone's blog (Arnold? Neal?)   I have the feeling that it's Midlands,
> but that could be wrong too.
>

I once cited a lexicon published an issue of the journal of the ADS - I'm
blocking on the name of it - from the '20's that listed words and phrases
from the area around the former Alabama Polytechnic Institute in Auburn. It
had examples of "all the ADJ [that SUBJ VP]:

"This is all the _far_ that I can jump."

I'm not familiar with this version. I mentioned that

"All the ADJ-er that SUBJ VP" as in

"This is all the _farther_ that I can jump"

is a common type in the BE of both Marshall and Saint Louis. But, as usual,
I simply left the validity of my claim as an exercise for the reader.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org