"of a TIMESPAN"

[Wilson Gray]

But, isn't simple "of a morning," by itself, common?

"I love the smell of napalm _of a morning_."

Of course, that's not what he said. But had he put it that way, it
wouldn't have struck as being, in any way, distinctive.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 6:24 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "of a TIMESPAN"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mar 8, 2009, at 11:10 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:
>
>> Here's another North Carolinaism, or at least I've never heard it
>> anywhere
>> else, and in fact I've only heard it once there.
>>
>> "early of a morning". Â In the sense of "early in the morning". Â e.g.
>> "I
>> enjoy sitting outside, early of a morning."
>>
>> Speaker was an early 80ish woman from north central NC (Vance County).
>> Don't know if it was unique to her idiolect, or in general use in
>> that area.
>
> i'd expect this to be found scattered over english dialects (UK and
> US), esp. in rural, non-standard, and older speakers. Â it's a survival
> from earliest english -- subentry 51a for "of" in the OED Online ('at
> some time during, in the course of, on') -- with cites of things like
> "of a Thursday", "of an evening", "of a night", etc. over about 1700
> years.
>
> arnold
>
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