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Language Log like list Cristi Laquer at Invented Usage has recently posted "on like usage". She cites a number of blog posts on the various innovative uses of like (the hedge, the quotative and so on), including a Language Log post, and asks "If anyone knows of anything else out there, please let us know!" The classic (non-blog) reference is Muffy Siegel's paper "Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics" (J. of Semantics 19(1), Feb. 2002). In thinking about other references on our site, I came to three conclusions at almost the same time. There have been quite a few Language Log posts that are relevant to the use of like; it's hard to find them; and none of them summarizes the epic panorama of that protean word's patterns of usage. To start with, here's a reasonably complete list, in chronological order, of Language Log posts relevant to like: It's like, so unfair (Geoff Pullum) Like is, like, not really like if you will (Mark Liberman) Exclusive: God uses "like" as a hedge (Geoff Pullum) Divine ambiguity (Mark Liberman) Grammar critics are, like, annoyed really weird (Mark Liberman) This construction seems that I would never use it (Mark Liberman) Look like a reference problem (Eric Bakovic) Seems like, go, all (Mark Liberman) I'm like, all into this stuff (Arnold Zwicky) I'm starting to get like "this is really interesting" (Mark Liberman) This is, like, such total crap? (Mark Liberman)

In some sense, whistled languages use the phonology of a spoken language, such as Spanish in the case of the most well-known instance of this type of language, Silbo Gomero from one of the Canary Islands, La Gomera. Yet they implement this phonology in a radically different way — by whistling rather than moving organs in the vocal tract.