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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)

it might come as somewhat of a surprise to learn that some scholars reject natural selection as an explanation for the appearance, structure, and use of language.

to use Darwin's term, the roll film of the still camera was preadapted, although quite accidentally and unintentionally, for use in the motion picture camera. To use Gould's more neutral and more accurate terminology, this feature of the still camera was exapted for use in motion picture cameras. So, in effect, Chomsky and Gould assert that the human brain is analogous to roll film in that it evolved for reasons originally unrelated to language concerns; but once it reached a certain level of size and complexity, language was possible.

All mammals produce oral sounds by passing air from the lungs through the vocal cords, which are housed in the larynx (or "Adam's apple"). The risk of choking to which we are exposed results from our larynx being located quite low in the throat. This low position permits us to use the large cavity above the larynx formed by the throat and mouth (supralaryngal tract) as a sound filter. By varying the position of the tongue and lips, we can vary the frequencies that are filtered and thus produce different vowel sounds such as the [i] of seat, the [u] of stupid, and the [a] of mama.[9] We thus see an interesting trade-off in the evolution of the throat and mouth, with safety and efficiency in eating and breathing sacrificed to a significant extent for the sake of speaking. This suggests that the evolution of language must have provided advantages for survival and reproduction that more than offset these other disadvantages.

Homesigners in Nicaragua are famous among linguists for spontaneously creating a fully formed language when they were first brought together at a school for the deaf in the 1970s. But many homesigners stay at home, where they share a language with no one. Their “home signs” are completely made up, and lack consistent grammar and specific number words.

Over the course of three month-long trips to Nicaragua in 2006, 2007 and 2009, Spaepen gave four adult Nicaraguan homesigners a series of tests to see how they handled large numbers. They later gave the same tasks to control groups of hearing Nicaraguans who had never been to school and deaf users of American Sign Language (which does use grammar and number words) to make sure the results were not just due to illiteracy or deafness.

When asked to recount the vignettes to a friend who knew their hand signals, the homesigners used their fingers to indicate the number of frogs. But when the numbers got higher than three or four, the signers’ accuracy suffered.