"like" and "as if"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jun 23, 2005, at 1:30 PM, Larry Horn wrote:

> 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...
>>
>> 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...

just to bring out something we're all assuming here: what makes this
construction "ironic assertional" is that it conveys the negation of
the expressed proposition.  "like that matters" conveys 'that doesn't
matter', and "like you've never done that" conveys 'you've done that'.

(i'm weaseling by using "conveys", so as not to have to decide
whether it's implication or some kind of implicature that's at issue.)

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)