"like" and "as if"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Fri Jun 24 21:27:39 UTC 2005


Don't know when she picked it up, but my grandmother used to say "A fat lot of good that'll do you !"  She said it often.

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: "like" and "as if"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:31:15 -0400, Laurence Horn
wrote:

>At 10:04 AM -0700 6/24/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>>On Jun 23, 2005, at 1:30 PM, Larry Horn wrote:
>>>At 4:16 PM -0400 6/23/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>>>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!"
>>>
>>>>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.)
>>
>Well, it's a strong enough negation to license negative polarity
>items, as I noted in a couple of old papers, citing the sentence:
>"A (fat) lot of good *that* ever did me".
>(Cf. the non-ironic "A lot of good has (*ever) been done by such
>efforts.")
>And along the same lines:
>"As if/Like *you'd* ever have a snowball's chance in hell of solving
>any of those problems."

Also:

As if/like *he* knows anything.
As if/like *he* cares anymore.
As if/like *he* gives a shit/damn/rat's ass/etc.

"A (fat) lot" doesn't work in these frames, however. "As if/like" can
negate a yes/no proposition, while "a (fat) lot" requires a quantitative
assessment (how much one knows/cares/etc., vs. whether one knows/cares).
But I'm sure this is all covered in Larry's negation papers...


--Ben Zimmer


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