[Ads-l] "just as good _of_ a(n) NP"

[Dan Goncharoff]

I grew up in NYC. Sounds completely normal to me.

I was taught not to use it in writing. The "of" is superfluous.
On Oct 19, 2015 7:06 AM, "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "just as good _of_ a(n) NP"
>
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>
> I was never taught *not* to use "of" in those cases - presumably because
> nobody was foolish enough to use it.
>
> If anyone in NYC was doing so before the mid '70s, I have no recollection
> of hearing them.
>
> That includes people on TV, by the way.
>
> It still sounds bizarre to me - and not just from a prescriptivist
> position.
>
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 8:54 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: "just as good _of_ a(n) NP"
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 7:17 PM, Benjamin Torbert <btorbert at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I was taught, in the 1980s, that it was [prescriptively] verboten.
> >
> >
> > The rule is longer-lived than I thought. I learned it in high school,
> > 1950-54. Oddly, lots of people around the Web are under the impression
> that
> > the "as good _of_ a" type of a  <har! har!> construction originated as
> > recently as last year, among a few of the uneducated. There are people
> > arguing both sides of the matter. I even found an instance of a teacher
> > asking for advice as to what reason he could give his students for not
> > using the _of_.
> >
> > The only reason that my teachers bothered to give me was that using the
> > _of_ would lower my grade. That's a better reason than telling people
> that
> > they don't know the "rules of grammar" of their native language, when the
> > question is simply one of stylistics.
> >
> > Oddly, _as good of a_ can be Googled only back to the '90's, whereas _as
> > bad of a_ can be traced back to 1702, but only in one work by a single
> > author:
> >
> > https://books.google.com/books?id=3DwAoUAAAAQAAJ
> > Letters from the Dead to the Living, =E2=80=8EThomas Brown - 1702 - P.241
> > _Scarron_. Be not Angry, good, [sic] Monsieur l'Abbe ; I do believe as
> bad,
> > of a Priest, as you can desire to have me...
> >
> >
> > On the following page, the same character says:
> > _Scarron_. I have since drank [sic] a _swinging draught_ of Lethe's
> > forgetful stream.
> >
> >
> > I doubt that an earlier instance of this use of "swinging" can be found,
> > even in HDAS! ;-)
> >
> > --=20
> > -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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> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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