Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Whole ‘Nother Paper
Kent Hendricks—a Calvin alumnus, CICW colleague, blogger in his own right and now in CICW’s own right—is on the lookout for the phrase whole nother, as in “a whole nother ballgame.” His inquiry includes a blog, wholenother.blogspot.com, that lists examples of the phrase he overhears (the blog’s existence, to its own peril, Kent reports, seems to have put a dent in usage among his friends), and a paper he wrote for Jim Vanden Bosch’s linguistics class on the linguistic classification of whole nother. The abstract, followed by the paper (at least until Language publishes it and asks us to take it down…):
The construction a whole nother has puzzled linguists for decades. It does not abide by the rules of traditional grammar and rarely appears in written English, yet it is found in nearly every idiolect. Because its use is restricted to only spoken English, there is little written documentation of it, and its origins are somewhat clouded in mystery. Most of the discussion surrounding this construction has taken place among structuralist linguists in online discussion forums, and linguists have disputed its presence and ubiquity in the language without reaching any kind of consensus. Language is a system of rules, and everything spoken follows to strict sets of rules that govern semantics, syntax, and other elements of language. The phrase a whole nother exists in the English language because of a combination of rules in the English language that govern infixation, reanalysis, syntactic blending, and the noun phrase.
(To read this paper with the italics properly and helpfully preserved,
download it in .doc form.)
A Whole Nother: Infixation, Reanalysis, and Syntactic Blending, Oh My!
Kent Hendricks
ENG 334B
Linguistics
Prof. Vanden Bosch
November 22, 2004
In 2002, Don Chaffer and his Christian rock band, Waterdeep, faced a myriad of challenges. They had just released their latest album and discovered that they did not have sufficient money to tour. Their record label, Squint Entertainment, informed them that their rights to the song would expire soon and would not be renewed. That same year, both of Don’s parents were afflicted with cancer, and his mother died. Facing a bleak future in his personal life and a dwindling career as a musician, he reunited all past and present members of Waterdeep and recorded an album. It was a smashing success and gave both Don and the band a renewed vigor. The album was appropriately titled Whole ‘Nother Deal.
This construction – a whole nother – has puzzled linguists for decades. It does not abide by the rules of traditional grammar and rarely appears in written English, yet it is found in nearly every idiolect. Because its use is restricted to only spoken English, there is little written documentation of it, and its origins are somewhat clouded in mystery. Most of the discussion surrounding this construction has taken place among structuralist linguists in online discussion forums, and linguists have disputed its presence and ubiquity in the language without reaching any kind of consensus. Language is a system of rules, and everything spoken follows to strict sets of rules that govern semantics, syntax, and other elements of language. The phrase a whole nother exists in the English language because of a combination of rules in the English language that govern infixation, reanalysis, syntactic blending, and the noun phrase.
To better understand rules of infixation, rules of tmesis must first be understood. Tmesis, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is “the separation of the elements of a compound word by the interposition of another word or words.” It comes from the Greek word tmesis, which means “a cutting.” Tmesis is widely used in spoken English and even occurs in written English on occasion. Shakespeare uses tmesis in Richard II: “If on the first, how heinous e’er it be, To win thy after-love I pardon thee.” Here, he inserts heinous into howe’er. A Calvin student recently displayed a more modern and coarse example of tmesis by when he wrote in his weblog, “Everyone needs to chill the f—- out and be realistic” (Verhag). Tmesis has also been known to frequently appear in English in the form of a split infinitive, and generally allows for most strange splits in the lanuage to remain unnoticed.
Others, such as Laurence Horn, have argued that a whole nother is an occurrence of infixation, which is a specific kind of tmesis. Infixation usually refers to words inserted into other words, and this often, but not always, includes expletives. Examples of this in the United States are abso-f—-ing-lutely and posi-f—-ing-tively. Al Gore used tmesis in an attempt to appeal to labor unions at the Iowa Democratic Convention in 2000, and he exclaimed “And if you elect me president, I will veto any anti-union bill that comes across my desk! I guaran-damn-tee it!” (Ryan). If whole is infixed in another, then the intent of the speaker would simply be emphasis on the word another in much the same way that Al Gore placed extra emphasis on guarantee by infixing damn.
Infixation, like every part of the English language, follows strict rules, many of which depend on stressed syllables. All words that are infixed into other words are always inserted immediately before the stressed syllable. In other words, one could say kanga-bloody-roo but not kang-bloody-aroo. When the first syllable is stressed, the infixation moves to the next-stressed syllable; one could say fan-f—-ing-tastic but not f—-ing-fantastic or fantast-f—-ing-ic (Horn). A whole nother follows this rule of infixation by inserting whole immediately before the stressed syllable of another.
Rules of reanalysis can also explain the existence of a whole nother in spoken English; the construction could be explained by the historical movement of the n back and forth from the beginning of the noun to the end of the preceding article. The English language has historically shown significant flexibility regarding the placement of the letter n at the beginnings and ends of words. This phenomenon characterizes many Indo-European languages and has existed since before the Greeks wrote αυτον instead of αυτο when the following word began with a vowel. Many of the words in English that exhibit reanalysis entered the language from French. Between the eleventh century and the fourteenth century, the English language was bombarded the French words. At the same time, the English language was moving from a synthetic language to an analytic language. This meant that nouns were losing their declensions, including the indefinite article.
This movement impacted many words. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word for “apron” entered the English language from French in the late thirteenth century as naperonn, By 1400, it was spelled napron, but by the end of the fifteenth century, the n had moved to the indefinite article, and an apron became the standard form. Similarly, a noumpere appears in 1362, but by the fifteenth century the n moves to the article which eventually produces the modern form, an umpire. The word orange has a similar history with roots in Semitic languages. A similar change from an other to a nother could logically occur in spoken English, because the rules of the language would not restrict it. In fact, nother was at one time part of the standard form of English, but is now obsolete. However, it inevitably takes longer for standard written English to follow: the forms an umpire and a noumpere were both acceptable for nearly a century before an umpire became standard. Thus, nother, as it exists in a whole nother – is not part of standard written English. Furthermore, because an other and a nother is the same phoneme, infixing whole between a and nother would be a logical next step if the speaker wanted to add emphasis.
Reanalysis is also part of a more complex history of the indefinite article in the English language and its relationship to both the cardinal one and the word other. The indefinite articles a and an have a long history that has its origins with the numeral one. This is significant because many rules that govern another also govern the construction one other. The Old English an, which was the word for ‘one,’ became “proclitic and toneless… while as a numeral it remained long,” and by the thirteenth century, on became the spelling for the numeral (Oxford English Dictionary). The indefinite article was declined until the fourteenth century, after which only the forms a and an remained.
Gerald Cohen has also proposed that a whole nother could follow rules of syntactic blending. Examples of syntactic blending include the phrase “time again again,” which results from the combination of time after time and again and again. The phrase a whole nother, according to Cohen, is the resulting form from that’s another thing entirely combined with that’s a whole new thing. Both of these forms combined carry more emphasis than the word another could carry alone.
To better understand the phrase a whole nother thing, it must also be properly understood how each word in the phrase functions as part of a noun phrase. Noun phrases are governed by a highly complex set of syntactic rules, and, after understanding these rules, one can better assess the peculiarities of the phrase a whole nother thing. Such rules include the ordering of words in the noun phrase. For example, every person would acknowledge that the phrase steep icy snow-capped active volcano is preferred over icy active snow-capped steep volcano, even though neither phrase breaks the rules of traditional grammar. Saying the latter phrase would attract attention. The phrase a whole nother thing regularly breaks similar rules of the noun phrase that applies to steep icy snow-capped active volcano, albeit rules of more complex nature, yet it attracts only the attention of a handful of linguists; few speakers of English are even consciously aware of its existence.
Because another historically comes from other plus the indefinite article, which has its own history linked to the ordinal one, another and other behave very differently in noun phrases, because other can still be combined with the indefinite article, while another cannot. Because of this, the phrases another three examples, the other three examples, and the three other examples are all normal constructions, but one could not say a three other examples (391).
If a whole nother thing is understood as a wholly other thing, then the article a is the determiner, wholly is the size and modifies other, other is the noun-modifier, and thing is the head noun. In this case, a whole nother thing, would not break the rules of the noun phrase.
However, if a whole nother thing is understood infixically as a-whole-nother thing, then a-whole-nother would function as a complete modifier by itself, because it would technically be only one word, just as abso-f—-ing-lutely, guaran-damn-tee, and kanga-bloody-roo are all one words. Whole would simply be infixed only for the sake of emphasis, and it would not by itself break rules of the noun phrase. This is not a complete solution, because another is the only word in the noun phrase in which whole is infixed.
Given that, thus far, rules of infixation have not explained the peculiarities of a whole nother in the noun phrase, perhaps a better understanding of the word whole as it functions within the noun phrase will provide an explanation. The word whole has several functions in the language, but two of these functions concern the phrase a whole nother. First, whole can be used for emphasis: It was a whole new way of looking at something. Second, it can be used to describe the entirety of the noun that follows it: The whole country grieved after September 11. The phrase a whole nother seems to employ both of these usages, and to what extent each usage is found in the noun phrase has drastic implication in terms of syntax, yet this still does not explain why rules of infixation provide an incomplete explanation of the ubiquity of a whole nother.
The parts and the order of noun phrases are complex, so perhaps a more thorough analysis of the noun phrase will yield an explanation of a whole nother, beginning with the determiner, which is the most difficult part of the noun phrase to define. The Cambridge History of the English Language defines determiners as “the cover term for articles (a, the), demonstratives (this, that), and quantifiers (few, three)” (696). The Comprhensive Grammar of the English Language asserts that determiners are used in noun phrases that “refer to the linguistic or situational context. The kind of reference a particular noun phrase has depends on its determinative element… the item which ‘determines’ it” (Quirk, 253). James McCawley, in The Syntactic Phenomena of English, defines determiners as “the syntactic counterpart of the logical category of quantifier.” In other words, the noun phrase expresses the logic of the sentence, and the determiner determines the degree of logic or truth in the phrase itself. He expounds: “A quantifier is an element of logical structure that specifies for how much or for which part of a domain a repositional function is true.” McCawley examines the sentence Some politicians are honest. Here, “the qualifier some indicates that ‘x is honest’ is true of a non-empty part of the domain defined by politician” (198). In some cases, whole, exists in the noun phrase as a quantifier.
Within the noun phrase, determiners fall into three classes. The first class is one of predeterminers, such as half, all, and double. The second class is one of central determiners, which include articles a, an, and the. Postdeterminers make up the third class of determiners, and they include cardinal and ordinal numbers and words such as many and few. General ordinals such as “next, last, part, (an)other, additional, and further… resemble the ordinal numbers grammatically and semantically,” and are thus included among postdeterminers (261). For example, in the phrases the first two days and another three weeks, the first and another both follow the same rules of semantics. “The three classes of determiners have been set up on the basis of their position in the noun phrase in relation to each other” (253).
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language categorizes another as a postdeterminer, which follow central determiners. This grammar also suggests that another is an alternative-additive determiner, which means that, as a determiner in the noun phrase, it signals that the noun will be an alternative to whatever was suggested before (“We took another road to the city.”) or it will add to the noun (“Give me another cookie.”). The phrase a whole nother would not likely be used as an additive determiner, because speakers normally do not emphasize something added to the noun in the same way they would emphasize an alternate to the noun. For example, if a child ate one cookie, he would not exclaim, “Give me a whole nother cookie!” to convey that he wanted an additional cookie of the same kind. On the other hand, if a judge of a baking contest found a cookie that was unlike any cookie he had ever tasted before, he might say, “That’s a whole nother kind of cookie!”
According to A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, “postdeterminers follow predeterminers or central determiners (if such determiners are present). But they precede any adjectives and other premodifying items” (261). Any adjectives, such as whole in a whole nother, that modify the noun that are placed between the determiners and the noun are called premodifiers or premodifying adjectives, and any that are placed after the noun are called postmodifiers or postmodifying adjectives. In general, every noun phrase that requires a determiner and contains determiners from all three classes orders determiners such that predeterminers precede central determiners, which precede postdeterminers, which precede premodifiers, which precede the noun. Furthermore, central determiners “form close-classed items that are mutually exclusive with each other, i.e., there cannot be more than one occurring before the noun head” (Quirk, 254).
In the phrase a whole nother thing, according to David Denison in his article in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, the word whole exists in the noun phrase as premodification where a determiner should be: “Rather than adjective preceding determiner, which would be a major structural change in the noun phrase, this is probably better taken as premodification within the determiner slot”. In other words, according to Denison, a functions as a central determiner, whole functions as a premodifying adjective, and nother functions as a postdeterminer in the noun phrase just as other or another would. This construction presents two problems.
First, premodifations such as whole cannot occur between determiners. Therefore, if whole does not
function in the phrase a whole nother as a premodifying adjective, then it is logical to assume that it functions as a determiner.
This presents the second problem, which concerns the order of determinatives. This is contingent on whole indeed functioning as a determiner in the noun phrase, because whole would be a predeterminer, while a, like all other articles, would be a central determiner. This means that, according to structuralists, a can never precede whole in noun phrases such as a whole nother thing. A search in the British National Corpora verified this. In the first three hundred results, whenever whole, unless it appeared as the head in the noun phrase or as a partative, was preceded by a determiner, the head noun immediately followed, except two instances where the word new followed as a premodifier. Furthermore, every time a determiner and the word whole existed together in the noun phrase, determiners always preceded whole; they are never found after whole.
At this point, it has been concluded that the phrase a whole nother thing breaks major rules of noun phrases, yet, time and again, goes unnoticed. This is perplexing, because when the order of simple noun phrases with strings of premodifying adjectives is altered, such as the phrase icy active snow-capped steep volcano, every listener immediately recognizes that a problem has occurred. It would be logical to assume that a whole nother would turn heads, just like icy active snow-capped steep volcano. Perhaps other rules of the English language allow even for the rules of noun phrases to be broken. Specifically, three rules are combined in the formation of a whole nother thing.
First, the history of the reanalysis of the n in the English language and in many other Indo-European languages allows words such as nother to exist in spoken English without question. The rule of reanalysis in the history of the word another allows it to be easily broken into two separate words – a and other – with little notice.
Second, rules of infixation allow for words to be inserted into other words before the stressed syllable to add emphasis. In the phrase a whole nother thing, the speaker clearly is emphasizing that whatever he or she is talking about (not writing about, as a whole nother thing almost never occurs in standard written English) is the complete opposite of something else. This is not just another thing, but a whole nother thing. Here, whole is both used to illustrate the entirety of the other and also to place extra emphasis on its otherness.
Third, rules of syntactic blending allow certain phrases that express emphasis to be combined into one single phrase. The speaker is emphasizing the wholeness of something and the otherness of something, and combines both ideas into a single phrase.
Even though a whole nother regularly breaks the rules of the noun phrase, it, unlike other instances where this occurs such as active snow-capped steep volcano, goes unnoticed and remains ubiquitous in nearly every person’s vernacular because the combination of the rules of infixation, reanalysis, and syntactic blending are together greater than the rule of the ordering of the noun phrase.
Works Cited
Breimeier, Russ. ”Whole ‘Nother Deal and What You Don’t Know.” Christianity Today. http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/reviews/2002/whoenotherdeal.htm. 2002.
Cohen, Gerald. “Re: A Whole Other Question.” ADS-L Archives – October 2002, week 2 (#49). http://listserv.linguistlist.org. October 9, 2002.
Denison, David. “Syntax” The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. 4. ed. Suzanne Romaine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Horn, Laurence. Linguist List 4.887: Infixes. http://linguistlist.org/issues/4/4-4-887.html. Oct 27 1993.
Horn, Laurence. “Re: -iz(z)- infix.” ADS-L Archives – March 2003, week 1 (#147). http://listserv.linguistlist.org. March 6, 2003.
Huddleston, Rodney D. The Cambidge Grammar of the English Language. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
McCawley, James D.. The Syntactic Phenomena of English. Chicago: University Press, 1998.
Quirk, Randolph. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Langauge. New York: Longman, 1985.
Ryan, Mike. “Real Difference Between Candidates On Building Trade Issues.” The Wisconsin Laborer. http://solidarity.com/wldc/wisconsinlaborerfall_2000.htm. Fall, 2000.
The Oxford English Dictionary. http://dictionary.oed.com. 2004.
Verhag, Matt. “VerhagM’s Xanga Site.” http://www.xanga.com/verhagm. November 5, 2004.