"like" avoidance/correction

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

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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