"like" avoidance/correction

Fri Apr 27 18:48:40 UTC 2007

At 2:26 PM -0400 4/27/07, Wilson Gray wrote:
>As Elvis once put it, "Now and then, there's a fool such as I."
>
>-Wilson

while Joe Cocker poses (if not begs) the musical question, "What are
you doing with a fool like me?"

LH

>On 4/26/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>>Subject:      Re: "like" avoidance/correction
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>On Apr 26, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Matthew Gordon wrote:
>>
>>>  On last night's Newshour, Gwen Ifill started a question with
>>>  "like", then
>>>  self-repaired:
>>>  "Like with every other case - As with every other case we're
>>>  looking at this
>>>  term, it seems that we are watching to see what Chief Justice Roberts
>>>  does..."
>>>  Only the corrected version appears in the transcript:
>>>  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june07/campaignads_04-25.html
>>>
>>>  Is this a context where the traditional proscription of 'like'
>>>  applies? I
>>>  thought it was its use as a conjunction that people objected to.
>>
>>"like" as a subordinating conjunction would combine with a clause
>>(though perhaps an elliptical one), as a P with NPs, but here it's
>>combining with a PP.  MWDEU treats this as a conjunctive use, the
>>last of the four subtypes it lists.  MWDEU has examples, from
>>reputable sources, of
>>    like in bad MGM musicals
>>    like on most boats
>>    like on the Johnny Carson show
>>    like under the present scheme
>>    just like in the movies
>>
>>it doesn't explain why the PP examples are "conjunctive", nor does it
>>note that Ps can sometimes have PP objects ("from under the table").
>>perhaps the authors thought that the PP in "like" + PP is really an
>>elliptical clause (corresponding to a full clause along the lines of
>>"it is PP").  in any case, MWDEU lumps these in with more obviously
>>conjunctive instances of "like" -- which it doesn't disparage ("the
>>usage has never been less than standard, even if primarily spoken").
>>
>>>  Perhaps
>>>  partial recollection of the traditional proscription is combining
>>>  with more
>>>  modern condemnation of "like" as a discourse marker stereotypically
>>>  associated with young (Californian) women to feed avoidance of
>>>  likes of any
>>>  stripe in formal context. Almost certainly I'm not the first to
>>>  suggest
>>>  this, and I'd welcome relevant citations as well as further examples.
>>
>>i don't know about the role of discourse-marker (and quotative)
>>"like" in any of this, but condemnation of conjunctive "like" has
>>been around ever since the usage became fairly common, in the 19th
>>century (attestations go back 600 years or so).
>>
>>most of the larger handbooks note hypercorrect "as" for the P "like",
>>as in "He was built as a swordfish" (Hemingway).
>>
>>>  I consider our local NPR station's use of "listeners such as you"
>>>  in their
>>>  funding acknowledgments to be another case.
>>
>>"such as" isn't hypercorrect here, because it's not incorrect.  it's
>>just a more formal (or tonier) alternative to the P "like" (but see
>>below).  for a little discussion, see this posting of mine (which
>>also treats the untriggered reflexive "myself"):
>>
>>AZ, 9/5/05: Someone like me, someone such as myself:
>>    http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002458.html
>>
>>>  And, I recently found a more egregious example in a student paper:
>>>  "In my research into other libraries such as the Kemper Memorial
>>>  Library, I
>>>  have made some observations..."
>>>  The Kemper Library is the church library at the local Newman
>>>  Center, and
>>>  what the student meant is that she researched similar libraries in
>>>  other
>>>  parishes.
>>
>>now this one really is a hypercorrection, i think.
>>
>>the deeper issue is that what's going on is not just a choice between
>>"like", "as", and "such as" *in general*, but a choice *in specific
>>meanings*.  "as" and "such as" are particularly good for giving
>>exemplars, and "like" for expressing resemblance.  but these uses can
>>overlap (as in the "listeners X you" example above).  sometimes,
>>though, there's really no choice.  in the Kemper Library case,
>>there's really only one possibility for a restrictive modifier with
>>the resemblance sense --
>>    other libraries, such as the KML, [exemplar] (appositive modifier)
>>    other libraries, like the KML, [exemplar] (appositive modifier)
>>
>>    other libraries like the KML [resemblance] (restrictive modifier)
>>
>>in slightly different syntactic contexts you can get
>>    other libraries, like the KML, [resemblance] (appositive modifier)
>>as in:
>>    Other libraries, like the KML, restrict access to their shelves.
>>("like" here is a P with an object NP that actually denotes a
>>proposition, rather than an individual -- like "after" and "before"
>>in "I left just after Kim, so Kim left just before me".)
>>
>>arnold
>>
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>
>
>--
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>                                              -Sam'l Clemens
>------
>The tongue has no bones, yet it breaks bones.
>
>                                           Rumanian proverb
>
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