"like" and "as if"

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:16 PM -0400 6/23/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>"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.).

cf. also "a lot" in the same frames, e.g. "A lot *that* matters!"

Larry

>
>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