[Lexicog] Dissertation on "like"

[Fritz Goerling]

What if you replace every "like" by "you know"?  This is a habit some adults
have.
Maybe this deserves a psycholinguistic dissertation.

Fritz Goerling



  (In case you are not a regular reader of the Linguist List)

  If you, like, are, like, one of those, like, who, like, use, like, "like"
  like before and like after every other, like, word, or if this practice
  drives you up the wall, you may be surprised and interested to know that
  it has, like, fostered a growing body of linguistic research, of which
  this is, like, the, like, latest. Lexicographical entries (e.g. OED) may
  have to be, like, revised.

        Rudy Troike

     * *

     LINGUIST List 16.2552
     Mon Sep 05 2005
     _________________________________________________________________

     From: Alexandra D'Arcy <alex.darcy [address-marker.gif] utoronto.ca>
     Subject: Like: Syntax and Development
     Institution: University of Toronto
     Program: Department of Linguistics
     Dissertation Status: Completed
     Degree Date: 2005
     Author: Alexandra D'Arcy
     Dissertation Title: Like: Syntax and Development

     Dissertation Director(s):
     Sali Tagliamonte

     Dissertation Abstract:
     Discourse LIKE, as in (1), is one of the most salient features of
     present-day vernacular English.

     (1) a. LIKE, Carrie's LIKE a little LIKE out-of-it but LIKE she's the
            funniest. (3/T/f/18)
         b. Well, you just cut out LIKE a girl figure and a boy figure.
              (N/8/f/75)

     It is overtly stigmatized and associated with adolescents, where it is
     perceived as a crutch for lexical indecision (e.g., Diamond 2000;
     Siegel 2000). In the literature, LIKE is sometimes characterized as a
     'meaningless interjection' (OED) that can be used 'grammatically
     anywhere' (Siegel 2002:64).

     Descriptions such as these suggest that LIKE is unconstrained, yet
     language, despite inherent variability, is rule-governed (see also
     Underhill 1988; Andersen 2001).

     LIKE has received much attention in the pragmatic literature (e.g.,
     Schourup 1983; Andersen 1997 et seq.), but it has never been
     investigated from a variationist perspective. Consequently, this
     dissertation presents an accountable analysis of LIKE in a large corpus
     of contemporary English. The hypothesis developed in this work is that
     LIKE is not random, but interacts with syntactic structure in regular
     and predictable ways. To address this issue, the variable context is
     circumscribed according to structural criteria and the analyses are
     embedded within current Minimalist Theory (e.g., Chomsky 1995 et
     seq.). Over 20,000 structurally defined contexts are examined,
     comprising data from 97 speakers between the ages of 10 and 87.

     This method reveals that LIKE is 1) highly constrained by the syntax
     and 2) occurs in specific positions among speakers of all ages. Indeed,
     examination of language-internal constraints reveals that the community
     shares a single variable grammar for LIKE (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001).
     This feature is shown to have developed gradually and systematically,
     arriving at its current state through regular processes of language
     change. Using the grammaticalization models proposed by Traugott (1997
     [1995]) and Brinton (forthcoming), it is argued that after initially
     developing as a discourse marker, where it occurs clause-initially and
     links sequences of dialogue (Fraser 1988, 1990), LIKE then begins to
     enter syntactic structure, spreading to one maximal projection at a
time.
     _________________________________________________________________



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