[Ads-l] "than how"

[Laurence Horn]

On Jan 27, 2015, at 9:16 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:

> I once mentally noted that Troy Aikman uses "how" in this way all the time.

He also consistently uses "what" comparatives, e.g. "he's a more efficient passer than what he used to be". Most recently:

"To me, the punishment for the Patriots and/or Bill Belichick has to be more severe than what the punishment was for the Saints."

High School: Oklahoma
College: U. of Oklahoma, UCLA
Pro career: Dallas Cowboys

Aikman's accent is echt Oklahoma/Texas, and I'm assuming that's where the "how" and "what" come from as well; I didn't notice it much at UCLA myself.

LH

> On Jan 27, 2015 8:11 PM, "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      "than how"
>> 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> From a headphones site:
>> 
>> "It'll make the [Sony MDR-]Z7 even darker _than how_ it is already."
>> 
>> If I interpret the _how_ as "the way (that)," as in "that's _how_ it is" =
>> "that's _the way (that)_ it is," I understand why "than how it is" strikes
>> me as being as fully grammatical as simple "than it is," when it ought not
>> to. (Or should that be, "ought to not"?)
>> 
>> Youneverknow.
>> 
>> --
>> -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
>> 
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>> 
> 
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