"like" and "as if"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>
>from Garry Tudeau's Doonesbury strip of 6/21/05:
>
>-----
>A: So basically you're quitting your job to go to a party.
>B: Oh, like you've never done that?
>-----
>
>here, "like" + clause is punctuated as a question (presumably with a
>rising final intonation), but a somewhat more assured response would
>use an assertion.
>
>"as if" can be used in a similar way.
>
>i don't recall having seen any treatment, synchronic or diachronic,
>of this construction. if it's alluded to in the OED, i haven't found
>it.

Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
>I can't prove it, but I'm sure I was using this construction by 1970 and
>probably some years before that, though as an ironic or sarcastic
>statement rather than a question. The interrogatory force may come
>simply from the widely disdained "uptalk" phenomenon, which I at least
>took no note of till the mid '70s.

When it's an ironic/sarcastic assertion, there is often heavy stress on
the NP following "like" (especially if it's a monosyllabic pronoun):

"Like *that* matters!"
"Like *you* care!"
"Like *he* would know!"

The sarcasm can be emphasized by a preceding interjection ("yeah", "oh",
"ah", "hah", etc.).

This construction is hard to search for in the databases, but here's an
example of ironic assertional "like" from 1966 (in the same interview with
Country Joe and the Fish that I recently cited for "get spaced"):

-----
"Country Joe and the Fish" by Greg Shaw
_Mojo Navigator_, 22 November 1966 (rocksbackpages.com)
BARRY: Every time Joe McDonald gets spaced he sings old folk songs.
TOM: Now the truth comes out.
DAVID: Yeah, that's a good point, man, we all do. As a matter of fact we
all sing old folksongs when we're not doing rock'n'roll to keep our heads
straight.
JOE: That's for security; you want to go back to something that you know.
TOM: Yeah, but you just said you don't have any roots there. Yeah, like
it's a fraud for you to sing folk songs.
-----

The sarcasm isn't too heavy here, but there is clearly an ironic intent,
since Tom Weller (the band's poster designer) isn't really accusing Joe
McDonald of being a fraud for singing folk songs.



--Ben Zimmer