Not all that

[Benjamin Barrett]

I'm not good at describing intonation, but there is a set intonational
pattern with the idiom "it's not all that". Glenn's seemed clearly
different to me.

Benjamin Barrett

>-----Original Message-----
>On Behalf Of Wilson Gray

>What do you mean by the "[sentence intonation] *typically*
>associated with the idiom 'it's not all that'"?

>-Wilson Gray

>On May 4, 2004, at 2:28 AM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:

>> This morning on the 8 AM PDT news broadcast on 710 KIRO radio in
>> Seattle, Christopher Glenn used the expression (to be) "not
>all that".
>> But he used
>> normal sentence intonation rather than that typically associated with
>> the
>> idiom "it's not all that".
>>
>> When I heard it, I couldn't make up my mind whether he was using the
>> idiom or simply stringing English words together. I wonder if he's
>> adopted the
>> expression without the intonation...
>>
>> Benjamin Barrett
>> Baking the World a Better Place
>> www.hiroki.us