Noncompositional

The other day in the class I’m TAing, the professor said, “by the end of the semester, there are ten questions that you should be able to answer like that.” That got me thinking, what is up with the phrase “like that” and its meaning, namely ‘with ease’. For one thing, it’s really hard to represent in writing. You could use typographic emphasis: he can do it like that. Or you could add a word to make it clearer: she finished it just like that. Or, you could notice that it’s sometimes (often?) accompanied by a snap of the fingers, so could have: “You should be able to answer it like that,” he said with a quick snap of the fingers.

And on that note: it seems likely to me that what we have here is a phrase that was at some point rather dependent on a concurrent snap (either timed with that, or perhaps, for dramatic effect, just before that) to make any sense, but over time the association became conventional enough that the gesture was no longer needed. And in fact you could say like that along with any appropriate gesture that indicates speed, ease, or some similar idea. It’d be interesting to see if, in the absence of any gesture, it is regularly or obligatorily replaced by some prosodic cue.

Then I checked the OED entry for like, and lo and behold, there was a meaning! But it wasn’t what I was expecting:

[...] of the nature, character, or habit indicated; spec. (usu. accompanying the crossing of the speaker’s fingers) as an indication that two people described are very friendly or intimate

The first written attestation for this use is from The Great Gatsby. For me, if I want to express that meaning, I’d have to use the finger-crossing gesture – no amount of facial or intonational gymnastics seems to get it quite right. Which is interesting, since my first associations with that particular gesture are the “hope” and “nyah nyah I can break my promise” meanings.

In case you haven’t seen it, the LA Times has an article, A final say? They hope not, that describes the efforts to describe and revitalize Washo, a severely endangered California Indian language. A nice story (and very cool for Alan to have his picture in the [online version of the] paper).

A side-note: check out the photo of Alan facing Ramona. On the shelf in the background there’s a crank-style pencil sharpener. Anyone else think there might have been a better place to install it?

This morning as I was walking to campus, I thought about the meaning of share. There are, broadly, at least two cases where you can describe some situation as involving sharing. One is where there is some individual K who has ownership/possession/control over a particular item (call it a “resource,” though it could be a toy truck). K allows some other people to make use of that resource, potentially as though it were their own, but with the understanding that the resource still belongs to K. If the people K is sharing the resource with eventually decide they don’t need to use it any more, then K goes back to having full use over it. The other situation involves joint ownership or “usership.” Two or more individuals have access to some resource, either because it is public (e.g., computers in a library) or because they acquire it together, and agree to some arrangement that lets each of them use it approximately whenever they want to. If it ever happens that one of the individuals decides they don’t need use of that resource any more, and if they have joint ownership (i.e., not a public resource) then there may have to be some negotiation to see what happens to the resource (e.g., they exchange money so that one person has paid the full price of the resource).

In thinking about these two different situations (which, yes, can be found in a good dictionary), I thought: when can you say something like I’m sharing X with her? Certainly if you are K above, then you can say this. And if you are one of the individuals in the second situation, then you can say this as well. Okay, how about I’m sharing my X? Again, okay if you’re K, but not if you’re in the second situation. That makes sense. How about I’m sharing his X? At first, I thought maybe that didn’t make sense. If Jason shares his bike with me, then it doesn’t seem like I could say I have a bike I can use — I’m sharing Jason’s. So I checked Google (so far I’ve just looked for “sharing his X”).

Turns out there’s a lot of sharing other people’s stuff, but it’s not the meaning I was looking for: there’s a sense of share that has to do with informing or communication: I can share the findings of my research with your, or share Jason’s email from last night. But, in all the examples, I did find a few of the type I was after. One was pretty normal:

I do feel a need to at least be nice to Dave Winer while I’m sharing his potato chips. (0xDECAFBAD)

And the rest seemed to come from creative writing blogs and websites.

And yes, I’m sharing his room with him. (Jueann’s Project and Diary)

It’s not that he’s verbally telling me not to say too much. I’m sharing his body, and his brain, just for the moment. (One To Many)

I flew with Mr. Eagle again today I think it must be the same one that I flew with last time he seems not too worried that I’m sharing his space.

Yes, it’s just anecdotal evidence, but I swear, several times I’ve been looking for slightly oddball constructions, and nearly all the hits are from some sort of creative writing – serial stories on blogs, fanfiction, and so forth.

At the risk of exposing myself as a video game geek as well as a linguistics geek: I am a fan of the Final Fantasy series of video games, which are console-style role playing games developed by the Japanese company Square Enix (formerly SquareSoft, and at some point involved with Electronic Arts). The series began on the Family Computer System (Famicom) in Japan in 1987, and released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in America in 1990. The basic premise in these games is that you are (or control) some hero (who may be reluctant) who ends up having to save the world from some magical, political, or politico-magical force. The hero is also accompanied by a group of companions who tag along for various reasons, including possibly being heroes themselves.

Without getting into the gruesome details of how the gameplay works, one important aspect is called status effects, or simply status. A status effect is some temporary or curable altering of a character’s normal condition. That is, normally a character is able to take any of the normal commands (attack with equipped weapon, cast spell, execute class-specific action [e.g., steal from opponent]), etc.), and execute them in a timely fashion with the desired effect. Characters also never randomly tire, drop dead, or get second winds, etc. on their own. However, any number of things can change this. A character may be “poisoned,” meaning that they will “die” (go out of commission) as their body is gradually weakened; or they may be “blinded,” and be unable to connect with physical attacks; or they may be “confused” and execute random commands on random targets; and so on. For each status, there is usually a particular way to cure it without waiting for it to stop on its own. To cure poisoning, one can use an antidote; for blindness, eye drops; for confusion, whack them with something.

Read more »