[Ads-l] "great of guy"

[Ben Zimmer]

For reference, the Zwickyan term for DEG-ADJ-of is "+of EDM," where EDM
stands for "exceptional degree marking." Arnold has a page on his site with
links to relevant posts.

https://arnoldzwicky.org/linguistics-notes/edm/

I'm not seeing any discussion of the anarthrous version that Larry
encountered. In his post on "Innovative EDM," Arnold itemizes these
constructions:

https://arnoldzwicky.org/2012/04/12/innovative-edm/
(0) Deg Adj a I (that handsome a guy)
(1) Deg Adj PL (that handsome guys)
(2) Deg Adj a PL (that handsome a guys)
(0') Deg Adj of a I (that handsome of a guy)
(1') Deg Adj of PL (that handsome of guys)
(2') Deg Adj of a PL (that handsome of a guys)

...but the paradigm is lacking "that handsome of guy." (No Google hits for
that particular phrase, though there's a smattering for "that great of
guy," "that nice of guy," etc. Still feels like a typo/speecho to me
without the "a.")

--bgz

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 11:23 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> OK, I know Arnold has discussed the "DEG ADJ of a N" construction in
> various guises (e.g. "not that unusual of a construction"). Arnold has
> names for the different species of this genus, but I can't remember
> where--Arnold will know, and Ben Z probably will too. For a while, a few
> decades ago, one would readily find "how good of an X" or "not that great
> of a Y", but it would be odd to see this generalized to other adjectives.
> Not so odd anymore, as Arnold's examples and others cited by list members
> show. But still this one strikes me as extremely peculiar. From one of the
> wedding announcements in Sunday's NYT:
>
> In September 2018, Ms. Kamat boarded a plane for Mississippi and spent a
> weekend with Mr. Rao on his university’s campus in Oxford. She was curious
> to meet the friends he had often talked about, which made Mr. Rao “very,
> very nervous,” he said.
>
> But once she arrived and heard from his friends about *what a great of guy*
> he was, Mr. Rao’s nerves relaxed.
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/style/vaibhavi-kamat-jaideep-rao-wedding.html
>
> Note that unlike many instances of the adjectival + of sequence, this one
> has no indefinite article following, although I'm not sure "what a great of
> a guy" would sound that much more natural to me. Maybe a little. And of
> course "how great of a guy" is impeccable, but that's not the version we
> have here.
>
> Here's another hit. with "how" as the degree modifier:
>
> Ryan told us *how great of guy* Lee was before we ever met him, but we
> really had no idea.  Lee and his wife, Kathy, took southern hospitality to
> a whole new level.
> https://m.bassmaster.com/blog/lee-richardson-fisher-fishers
>
> And similarly, this from a story about a 19-year-old baseball player who
> died in a car accident:
>
> "Everyone we’ve talked to just talked about *how great of guy *he was, and
> how he made them feel seen and heard, and I think that’s so important.”
>
> Has anyone here encountered this particular variant of DEG-ADJ-of? Or have
> I just been sleeping under a rock, old of guy that I am?
>
> LH
>
>

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