regional "most the CN"?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Dec 15 20:19:45 UTC 2009


One of our graduate students, from Cleveland, reports that he has
said "most the books" (= 'most of the books') all his life, and it
shows up with 1.9 raw g-hits.  Googling also pulls up "some the
books" (2.9 million) and "many the books", although Mike (from
Cleveland) doesn't find those possible, only "most".  (It looks like
most *(of) the hits for "few the books" are actually irrelevant:
"...to name a few.  The..." and the like.  But the hits for "most",
"some", and "many" seem to be mostly instances of this construction,
with what for standard (dare I say for most) speakers seems to
involve a missing "of".  Any common noun, mass or plural, following
the "the" would do as well here: "most the people", "most the
movies", "most the water",...

Does anyone know if this is a regionally robust phenomenon?  I
couldn't find anything relevant in DARE.

LH

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