"The thing is is..."
Have any of you noticed this construction lately? Sentence beginning with "The thing is is that ..." with the repetition of the word "is". I've noticed a huge surge in the use of this collocation, over the last five years, replacing what to me would be a more expected version: "The thing is..." with only one "is". OK, so I am obviously not the first one to notice this, and in fact there's a nice discussion of it at the Language Log from a little over a year ago. Any further thoughts?
posted by Adam Ussishkin @ 8:27 PM
1 Comments:
Adam,
Had also noticed the "is is" construction, so your posting had me thinking about it enough to notice when a friend said in conversation last night, "What the thing is is . . .." This struck me as a close "relative" but with more standard grammar. Only after that have I looked at the link you cited, which also suggests a connection here. Thought I'd mention the "independent" detection of a possible grammatical ancestor.
Kevin
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