like

[Alexander Gross]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <hstahlke at bsu.edu>
To: "Alexander Gross" <language at sprynet.com>; <funknet at rice.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 8:10 PM
Subject: RE: [FUNKNET] Re: like


> -ly and 'like' both come from Old English li:c 'body', a word that is
preserved in 'lychgate', a covered gate into a churchyard where the pall
bearers rest a body on the way from the church to the burial site.

Thanks.  As you've no doubt noted, perfectly cognate with German Leiche, for
"body."  And the German 'gleich,' meaning among other things..."like," seems
to be lurking in the background.

> It shows up pretty early in English as a derivational suffix meaning "in
the manner of".
During Middle English the final consonant was lost resulting in the form now
spelled -ly.  Modern 'like' in 'childlike' is a doublet with -ly, but it
forms compounds rather than derivative forms.  German -lich and Dutch -lijk
have a similar history.
>
> English 'wise' has largely lost the meaning of 'manner', except in the
rare, perhaps 'in this wise'.  Ingo Plag (Word Formation in English,
Cambridge 2003) argues that it's no longer a compound element but a
combining form.  Whether it's a combining form or a noun used to form
compounds depends on how one treats 'in this wise', as archaic or not.
>
Thanks again.

> Herb Stahlke
>
>
> "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker
novel,
> where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard
> British English and/or criminal cant.  I would love to tell you the title,
> but I either left the book in England or have it sitting in an attic 100
> miles north of here.
>
> What follows is not a "sociolinguistic study" or anything approaching
> "science" but merely my own speculations:
>
> I've sometimes wondered whether this use of "like," whether after a verb
or
> an adjective, could be something like an adverbial surrogate or a form on
> its way to becoming an adverb.  Just as the basic forms of life are
> continually re-evolving in the sea around us, could various stages of
> evolving language forms also be in the process of reenactment?  After all,
> where did the adverb suffix "-ly" come from anyway?  And why do we find
the
> adjective suffixes "-lich" and "-lijk" in German and Dutch?
>
> Both so-called substandard English and standard German make their
adjectives
> double as  adverbs, but could there nonetheless be a shared feeling among
> speakers that something might be missing?  Could the explanation for this
be
> found in a lost ancestor of several related  languages?
>
> This is scarcely to suggest that adverbs represent any kind of linguistic
> advance or that languages with an adverb for every adjective (which would
> exclude English) are superior to those without this feature, rather it
seems
> interesting to note what may be a common conflict within a small group of
> languages.
>
> But why an adverb?  I would suggest that such speakers do not feel full
> confidence in the words they use and thus feel the need for some kind of
> qualification, even if they are not sure what form this qualification
should
> take.  And this comes out as "like."
>
> A more persuasive adverbial surrogate is "wise," which is also sometimes
> claimed as an Americanism.  As in "How are we doing supply wise?"
>
> This is not quite off topic, since adverb-shunning Germans sometimes tack
a
> two- or three-syllable adverbial surrogate onto their nouns and
adjectives,"
> namely "-weise" or "-erweise."  Thus, the following structure:
>
> Er hat uns sehr freundlicherweise erwaehnt, dass...
>
> Could be translated into an extreme form of American English as:
>
> He mentioned to us like real friendly wise that...
>
> I recall a Royal Shakespeare actor friend making fun of Americans who talk
> like this, his example was "the  owl who wasn't very wise wise-wise."
>
> best to all,
>
> alex
>
>
>
>
>