Re: [ADS-L] all of the sudden, on e at the time, still in the bed

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 7, 2006, at 6:20 AM, Ron Butters wrote:

> Your arguments are pretty compelling. It could well be that I
> simply assumed
> that the seemingly unfamiliar constructions were regional rather
> than simply
> variable and mostly (apparently) below the level of consciousness.
> It is also
> possible that the "a" variable is historically dominant and that
> there is some
> kind of change that has taken place in the last 40 years in which
> the "the"
> variable gathers strength. This would take a lot more reasearch
> than I have time
> to do right now, but in any case it is an interesting variable and
> worth
> spending some time on.

i also don't have the time, though i agree that "all of the sudden"
is an interesting variable.  in particular, it's common enough that
you could actually try to get at patterning in the choice of
variants.  many of the items i study are of such low frequency that
you can't really study patterning -- and, in fact, i've suggested (in
a Language Log piece, "Sprinkled under the radar",   http://
itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003106.html, that for
some of these items there probably *isn't* any patterning (in effect,
that their spread is rather like Brownian motion).

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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