"A Whole Nother" and "Alls I Know Is"

[sagehen]

Katherine Hageland writes:

>I'm a PhD graduate student taking my first linguistics class in many, many
>years. I guess I'm the traditional non-traditional student. I constantly
>hear people saying "a whole nother" when they mean something like "That's
>a whole other ball game." I also hear people saying, "Alls I know about it
>is this" when they mean "All I know about it is this." I'm originally from
>California, but now studying in the Midwest. Are the constructions I'm
>hearing part of a dialect or are they some other linguistic phenomenon?
>
>Thanks!
>
 ~~~~~~~~~~
I find looking back that it was just about a year ago that I reported
hearing " a whole nother" on BBC!

>  (9/28/05) " Heard on  BBC's "World Update" this morning, in a report on
>Israeli reaction to rocket fire from Gaza,  correspondent Alan Johnson
>used the expression "a whole nother"  [ level of &c.... ]."<

I don't remember what dialect clues there may have been to Alan Johnson's
origins.
I first encountered the "alls" usage in  Ohio in the 70s, having lived the
previous 40 years in Nebraska, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, and
California.    I can't say it didn't exist in those places in those times,
but I hadn't heard it until then.  "Whole nother" is a whole nother matter:
that's been heard nearly everywhere now & then.
AM


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