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

[Ben Zimmer]

On 2015-10-19 9:04 GMT-04:00 Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>
> DQo+IE9uIE9jdCAxOSwgMjAxNSwgYXQgNDowNiBBTSwg...

Since Arnold's message came through garbled (thanks to the old "URL in
rich text" problem), I've reproduced it below, copied from the online
archive...

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2015-October/139364.html

[begin AZ's message]

> On Oct 19, 2015, at 4:06 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> 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.

it’s not what you’re used to.

but see
 http://arnoldzwicky.org/2010/12/02/of-edm-in-the-comics/

+of EDM has been attested in print since the 1940s, in “respectable”
places (like the NYT) since the 1970s, and for younger speakers it is
now simply the standard form.  they understand the older -of EDM, but
for them it must come from an odd non-standard dialect, or it’s
terminally old-fashioned, or it’s a typo.

arnold

[end AZ's message]

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