Fwd: "all the faster" (in Latin too)

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:59 PM -0700 6/27/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>a report from colorado:
>
>Begin forwarded message:
>
>>From: Laura Michaelis <laura.michaelis at colorado.edu>
>>Date: June 27, 2005 3:06:13 PM PDT
>>To: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
>>
>>Subject: Re: "all the faster"
>>
>>I'm afraid I know of no paper, in the Construction Grammar
>>framework or any other, that discusses the use of 'all the faster'
>>and its ilk in contexts that don't entail comparison. I quite
>>frankly had never even heard of this usage, although my colleague
>>Lise Menn, who grew up in Philly, is very familiar with it. Like
>>Arnold, she thinks it has very limited productivity, and in
>>particular that it's limited to 'bigger' and 'faster' (as in, e.g.,
>>'Is that all the bigger he's going to get?' said of a dog). For
>>what it's worth, I have a paper in Studies in Language (1994, vol.
>>18, number 1) that discusses a somewhat similar semantic extension
>>in Latin, in which ablative-case degree words paired with
>>comparatives (e.g., quanto altius 'the higher') are used to equate
>>*fixed* points on two scales, just as in English 'as...as'
>>constructions.

The Latin construction Laura mentions is very interesting; I was
speculating about a connection with "the more the merrier" as well.
But as to the claim that the non-comparative "all the Xer"
construction is limited to "bigger" and "faster", I think that's a
bit too strong a constraint.  Here are some relevant google hits, all
of which sound fine to me.

unfortunately, that's all the longer it's ever lasted

So as we here at the iPod Garage enter our eleventh week (is that all
the longer
it's been?) of publication,...

is that all the longer you expect your ride to last?!

I'd do her in half a second. Is that all the longer you would last?????

That's all the older she is

Charlie Kueper is 5.1 and that's all the older he is going to get.

If that's all the older it is, it should be fine.
[from a "What's Meat Answers" site]

Because that's all the older the earth is and you weren't there to
see the dinosaurs, so you can't speak.

That's all the older you are, Duck? Now I do feel old.

Is that all the better you think I can do??

Bagheera: Try [Mowgli tries to climb the tree-trunk but can't] Is that all the
better you can climb? Mowgli: It's too, it's too big around!
[yes, from Disney's "Jungle Book"]

Is that all the better of an argument you can put up? Pitiful.

That's all the higher it needs to be.

That's all the higher I expect it to play.

You mean he was full grown then and that's all the taller he was?

and so on, of course all involving unmarked adjectives denoting the
positive quantitative scalar element (no, or at most very few, cases
of "all the lower", "all the younger", "all the shorter" in the
relevant sense).

larry