"as good a guys"

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:03 PM -0500 5/25/07, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:
>I'm flattered by LH's mention in the last paragraph below, but fwiw
>I would not interpret "as good a guys" as a blend. Instead (again
>fwiw) I'd see "as good a guy as" acquiring the meaning "the best"
>in e.g., "He was as good a guy as I've ever dealt with"  (= He was
>the best guy I've ever dealt with).

This can't be quite right as it stands, since "as good a guy" doesn't
have the superlative semantics of "the best guy":

He was as good a guy as I've ever VPed, and so was his brother.
#He was the best guy I've ever VPed, and so was his brother.

LH

>Then by extension to the plural: "The guys I coached were as good a
>guys as [= the best guys] I've ever dealt with."
>
>Cf. also: "That's as fast a plane as you'd every want to see," which
>I suppose could be extended to "They're as fast a plane as [= the
>fastest planes] you'd ever want to see."
>
>  Somewhere in my publications is an article in which I try to show
>that a linguistic form can acquire a secondary meaning in context
>(e.g. "as well" = as capably; then: also) and that this secondary
>meaning can emerge independent of the original context, e.g. "He
>flunked Physics and failed Chemistry as well.").  That sort of
>development might also pertain to "as good a guys."
>
>Gerald Cohen
>
>________________________________
>
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Laurence Horn
>Sent: Fri 5/25/2007 3:25 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: "as good a guys"
>
>
>
>I'm not sure we've discussed precisely this faute-de-mieux
>construction, although it's related to phenomena we have touched on
>from time to time...
>
>"The guys I coached here were as good a guys as I've ever dealt with."
>--the reasonably articulate Jeff Van Gundy, recently dismissed coach
>of the Houston Rockets, about the players on his former team, in
>interview on WFAN a few minutes ago.
>
>I call it faute de mieux because there really isn't any better plural
>of "as good a guy", although I suppose most speakers would come up
>with "as good guys as..."   Seems like a good candidate for a
>Jerry-Cohenian blend, "(He was) as good a guy as..." + "(They were)
>good guys".
>
>LH
>
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