regional "most the CN"?

[Charles Doyle]

Somewhat (slightly?) analogous, I think of "a couple beers" (vs. "a couple OF beers") as midwestern. Have we discussed that construction, and its distribution?

--Charlie


---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:19:45 -0500
>From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on behalf of Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>)
>
>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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