GURT
In continuing the tradition of very short posts, here’s an update: I’m currently near Georgetown University for the Roundtable on little words. It’s (to me, anyway) a novel take on what conference themes can be about, and so far we’ve had a lot of interesting presentations.
And in non-linguistics, I’m getting my second-ever taste of snow in an urban setting. Actually, it was really only snowing on the day that I arrived, but it was a novelty nonetheless. Also interesting is watching the local news shows; something about theme seems different from what I’m used to, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I probably won’t have enough time to figure it out before I have to get back to the west coast.
What’s your take on that paper on quotative like (be like, more accurately) in other languages?
There was such a talk? I saw the talk by Leslie Cochrane on methods of disambiguation of “be like,” but it was all English.
One of my colleagues went, and he said “someone from California” gave a talk on “like” in which she claimed that the various usages were generalized across languages - he remembered “nanka” in Japanese and “genre” in French being mentioned, among others, as quotatives. Except it strikes both of us as unlikely. But he didn’t remember who she was.
Hmm…well, I missed that one (I suppose it was by the person from the Univ. of SF). I guess “nanka” is used as a filler in Japanese conversation, but I don’t think it can be used as a quotative. Impressionistically, its use is similar to the filler “like” in English; but that might just be my exposure to non-native speakers trying to use it as a filler.
However, I have heard from another source that in the Netherlands and Spain, there is something very similar to quotative “like,” but I don’t have the exact data now.