FW: "How ADJ is that?" (1970)

[Seán Fitzpatrick]

Wasn't this one of the verbal tics of the Chandler Bing character on
Friends, along with "Could <substantive> BE more <adj>?", e.g., "Could you
BE more ridiculous?"?

At first I boggled at the idea of both stress and falling intonation on
"THAT", but you are right.  The expression is not spoken as a question and
could be punctuated with an exclamation point.

So we have question-like inversions spoken as statements, and statements
ended with interrogative up inflection.  I think these Gen-Xers are just
messing with our minds.

Seán Fitzpatrick
Help the ontologically challenged realize their potential

-----Original Message-----
From: Laurence Horn [mailto:laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Monday, 20 February, 2006 12:11
Subject: Re: "How ADJ is that?" (1970)

At 2:19 AM -0500 2/20/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>The expressions "How fine is that?" and "How bad is that?" were in
>common use among white GI's as far back as 1959. It's too bad that
>there weren't portable tape-recorders available at the time to record
>such expressions in the wild, just in case that someone might wonder
>about them a half-century later! ;-)
>
>-Wilson

Just thought it worth noting that one key part of this construction, with
this particular use, is the stress on "THAT", and another is the falling
intonation at the end.

Larry

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