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

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

      At least part of the answer to "a whole nother" may lie in blending. E.g., "a whole nother thing"  from "a whole other thing" + "another thing entirely." Possibly it went through the stage "a whole another thing," with instant dissimilation of the second "a" to zero. There are likely other explanations though. Arnold?.

Gerald Cohen


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From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Katherine Hageland
Sent: Thu 10/5/2006 4:57 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "A Whole Nother" and "Alls I Know Is"



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!

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