"all the faster" (in Latin too)

[Peter A. McGraw]

--On Wednesday, June 29, 2005 9:51 AM -0700 "Arnold M. Zwicky"
<zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:

> On Jun 29, 2005, at 9:25 AM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>> I'm an "all the ...er" user and never thought of it as regional
>> (Minnesota
>> born and bred).  But I agree that Erik [Thomas]'s examples are odd,
>> indeed
>> ungrammatical for me.
>
> its regional status is pretty clear.  in the linguistic atlas
> materials, it's very much a middle atlantic thing (concentrated from
> new york through virginia), but by the time of DARE's collection it
> was strongly a north midland/inland north thing (still in
> pennsylvania, but centered in the ohio-through-illinois band).
> certainly alive in minnesota.  given that my eastern pennsylvania
> childhood was closer in time to the LAMAS collections than to DARE,
> it's no surprise that i have the feature.
>
> arnold

That's odd.  Then where did I get it?  I'm like Beverly: when I saw the
first message about who uses "all the ...er",  I thought, "Doesn't
everybody??"  I did most of my growing up (from age 4 to college) on the
West Coast and had a mother from Texas and Oklahoma and a father from Iowa.
The closest I ever came to any of the areas Arnold mentions, until college,
was being born in Cleveland and leaving (for Oklahoma) before age 1.  I
can't document the use of the construction by people around me, but
certainly never encountered any amusement, consternation or puzzlement when
I used it.

Peter Mc.


*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************