preposition - zero variation

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Feb 18, 2009, at 4:22 PM, i wrote:

> ... MWDEU has an entry on "like for" that suggests it is (or at
> least was)
> primarily a Southern and Midland expression, and primarily a feature
> of the spoken language. ..

a further observation: MWDEU, DARE, and the sources they cite all
treat (1) "like for NP to VP" and (2) "like NP to VP" as variants
distinguished only by regional dialect or style, but many speakers
have both variants, and it's quite likely that for these speakers they
are subtly different in meaning.

(1) has a clausal object for "like"; the associated semantics would
then be that this object denotes a situation.  the analysis of (2) is
less clear, and it might be possible that there are two structures
here: (2a), like (1), but with no overt complementizer, and (2b), in
which the NP is the direct object.  (2b) would then be like the direct-
object cases in my P~zero discussion (but with the complication of the
infinitival VP), and we'd expect that the referent of the NP would be
more directly affected.

arnold

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