Let me quickly add a further following revision. 
 
You have a whole nother year to work this out.

Blend: 
1) You have a whole new year to work this out.
2) You have another year to work this out.

This is based on a parallel analysis for:

Now we have a whole nother ballgame.

Notice the progression:

Now we have a whole new ballgame, now that the score is tied.
Now we have a whole nother ballgame, now that the rules have changed.
?Now we have a whole nother-other ballgame, now that the nature of the game has changed.

I suggest that reduplication might be appealed to to add another level of generality.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bruce D. Despain 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 4:32 AM
  Subject: word formation and morphology


  In my reply to Allison, I ventured an interpretation of "a whole nother" that on reflection now seems was not very thorough.  I would like to ask the list about how and to what extend word formation and morphology are included in their English curricula.  I have been working on a brief introduction to the subject and find it very difficult to be brief.  I want to divide the means of word formation into at least the 9 following types:
  Prefixing & Suffixing
  Compounding
  Conversion (one part of speech or usage to another)
  Combining forms (affixes in compounds)
  Back-formation
  Acronyms
  Blending (at both the word and phrase level)
  Eponymy
  Onomatopoeia

  Combinations of these often appear and sometimes they are lumped together as "portmanteau" phenomena.  In the case of "a whole nother" in Allison's example, "You have a whole 'nother year to work this out," we seem to have a portmanteau blending of "You have a whole year to work this out"  and "You have another year to work this out."

  These two determiners, "whole" and "another," are normally mutually exclusive, so perhaps this device is allowing the formation of a new compound determiner "a whole nother" containing the meaning of both.

  [italics not intended; sorry my editor doesn't work.]

  Bruce
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