"like" avoidance/correction

[Wilson Gray]

As Elvis once put it, "Now and then, there's a fool such as I."

-Wilson

On 4/26/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "like" avoidance/correction
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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