Intrusive "of"

[Ann Burlingham]

On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 2:07 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Intrusive "of"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Nov 9, 2008, at 10:31 AM, Alison Murie wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Alison Murie <sagehen7470 at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Intrusive "of"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> If ADS-L hadn't taught me to suppress my winces at a lot of
>> "substandard" speech, I think I'd be  wincing more often lately at the
>> intrusion of "of" into ADJ-NOUN expressions ("big of a thing,"  "dark
>> of a blue" &c.). Is this an attribute of a particular dialect........
>> which is taking over American speech?
>
> it's not new, and it's very widespread; for many young speakers, it's
> simply the right way to say these things, and the of-less variant
> strikes them as archaic, hyper-formal, or simply wrong.  we had a
> thread on the of-ful variant here back in february 2004 ("as ADJ of a
> N as"), with some bibliography, and i have posted a number of times on
> the phenomenon since then, here and on Language Log.

Hey, it's not that big of a deal.

--
Ann Burlingham
Burlingham Books
2 South Main Street
Perry, NY 14530
Phone: 585-237-3190
Fax: 585-237-6465
www.burlinghambooks.com
Wyoming County Chamber of Commerce
Most Promising New Business 2007

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org