LINGUIST List 3.174

Sat 22 Feb 1992

Disc: All's

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Ron Smyth, Re: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's
2. , RE: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's
3. (on Smyth, all's
4. Karin Evans, Re: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's
5. FD00000, 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's

Message 1: Re: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's

Although I, like Brian Teaman, balked at the complementizer explanation
for "All's I know is", I just realized that I also used to say things
like "Seeing as she isn't a linguist, how would she know?". So the
as complementizer was a little more general. But in both cases I think
that it was quite dead; "seeing as" was just an unanalyzed synonym for
"since", and "all's" was just "all" with an inexplicable -s. So now I'm
even more anxious to hear more on Ellen Contini-Morava's German
explanation.
Ron Smyth

Message 2: RE: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's

I'm an "all's" user from the south side of Chicago, circa 1940s.
 John Limber

_DARE_, the Dictionary of American Regional English, analyzes _all's_
as all + as (+that) = all that. Its cites are from the 60s and 70s,
from New England, but I have a friend from Cleveland who at the time
was using the form.

Dennis Baron debaronuiuc.edu
Dept. of English office: 217-244-0568
University of Illinois messages: 217-333-2392
608 S. Wright St fax: 217-333-4321
Urbana IL 61801

Message 4: Re: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's

I have a bunch of cousins, now in their late 20's-early 30's, who say
"Alls I know is." They grew up in Elyria, Ohio, which is VERY near
Lorain, Ohio. As far as I know, my aunt and uncle (their parents), who
moved to Elyria from other parts of the Midwest, do not have this
dialect feature.

In reply to Ellen Contini-Morava's question, I doubt very much
whether the use of "all's" in relative clauses (e.g. "all's you
need to do is ...") is related to German "alles". This use of
"all's" is a very common part of my native dialect (San Francisco
Bay Area), and most of us are at best several generations removed
from anything German.

For a long time, I thought this was a purely West Coast dialect feature,
since I noticed I would get funny looks from people from other regions
whenever I said it. But from the recent LINGUIST postings, I now know
that's not true. I have also just within the last year heard people
from El Paso and southern New Mexico (where I now live) say it, although
it doesn't seem to be common. Here again, a German connection seems
very unlikely.
 -Grant Goodall
 fd00utep.bitnet