Q: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

[Damien Hall]

'... Chuck Yeager flies, like, airplanes.':

Margaret and I independently chipped in with the third member of the
aphorism - so obviously it wasn't coined by my source for it in Philly in
2003 (and she has confirmed this to me, too). So the search goes on; one
more for the files!

More on the excellent exploitation of morpho-syntactic ambiguity of the
phrase, too - I noticed after posting yesterday (and it was pointed out to
me) that there are actually three uses of _like_ AND three uses of _fly_ in
it:

'Time flies like an arrow': intransitive verb _fly_, comparison _like_

'fruit-flies like a banana': noun _fly_, transitive verb _like_

'Chuck Yeager flies, like, airplanes': transitive verb _fly_,
discourse-marker _like_

Genius!

Damien

--
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
YO10 5DD
UK

Tel. (office) +44 (0)1904 432665
     (mobile) +44 (0)771 853 5634
Fax  +44 (0)1904 432673

http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb

http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/people/pages/hall.htm

DISCLAIMER: http://www.york.ac.uk/docs/disclaimer/email.htm

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org