Zero-option

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

I guess that depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.
Seriously, maybe he's reducing a consonant cluster in "it's"? Or an even more radical shortening of "The thing is".
-----Original Message-----
From:   RonButters at AOL.COM [mailto:RonButters at AOL.COM]
Sent:   Thu 6/19/2003 4:18 PM
To:     ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Cc:	
Subject:             Zero-option

Again following up on a post by Arnold Zwicky, I have been puzzling for
several years about the speech of my mortgage broker. Here is a native speaker of
American English, an educated, middle-aged man with no noticeable regional
American accent and no particular grammatical idiosyncracies except:

he starts abotu 20% of his sentences with "is".

As in:

I thought I'd call and tell you about the current situation with regards tdo
interest rates. Is that you can get a five-year baloon for 4.25%, but the
interest-free rate is 4.5%. So I think you should lock in on the regular baloon.
Is you can always drop the regular baloon and pick up the interest-free, but is
you have to lock in for 21 days.

Is this not weird? What drummer is he listening to?