Like in Scottish English

[Lachlan Mackenzie]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:20:24 -0000
 "Jean Crocker" <J.F.Crocker at newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:

> It's used in on Tyneside in the north-east of England
> too, perhaps in the same way as in Scotland? Example:
>
> Do you not want to, like?
>
>
> Jean

Dear Jean,

That seems very likely. Here's a summary I've made of
Miller and Weinert's (1998) main points:

They see LIKE as a particle, and within their typology of
focus constructions, more specifically as 'a
non-introducing, non-contrastive focuser which may focus on
new or given information'. They distinguish clause-initial
LIKE, 'concerned with the elucidation of previous comments'
and clause-final LIKE, 'concerned with countering
objections and assumptions' (all quotes p. 334). They deny
that, at least in their corpus of Scottish English, LIKE is
a 'filler item that helps speakers to hold the floor or to
avoid awkward silence' (p. 306); rather they show that it
is integrated in speech with the following or preceding
clause (p. 313). In favour of the view that LIKE is a focus
particle, they claim that 82% of the occurrences in the
corpus can be paraphrased by a wh-cleft or it-cleft (p.
318-321), but conclude (p. 319) that LIKE is a less
'powerful', but more 'flexible' focuser than a cleft. Their
corpus includes dialogues by 13-year-olds: these dialogues
show a lack of the focuser LIKE, whereas it is frequent in
the speech of undergraduates, suggesting to M&W that LIKE
'seems to be acquired relatively late. This may be caused,
not by an instrinic difficulty with the construction, but
by the late acquisition of discourse management skills' (p.
320).

Examples

Clause-initial LIKE: p. 331, after some dialogue about
whether young people question university entrance
requirements:

.. like I knew that I couldnae apply for Edinburgh because
I didnae have an O level language -- so I just didnae do it

Clause-final LIKE: p. 331, where the phrase "she has her
wings like" 'dispels any notion the listener might
entertain that [the speaker's] daughter can swim properly':

.. there's a wee kiddies' pool you know where my wee girl
can swim you know / she has her wings like // she jumps
right in you know ...

M&W are critical but respectful of the following book,
which apparently distinguishes 5 uses of LIKE:

Schourup, L.C. (1985). Common Discourse Particles in
English Conversation. New York: Garland.

I hope this is helpful. (I reviewed M&W's book in Journal
of Linguistics 37:1. 225-229 (2001).)

Here's the reference once again:

Miller, Jim and Regina Weinert (1998). Spontaneous Spoken
Language. Oxford: Clarendon.

Best wishes,


Lachlan