Quotative go and be like

This chapter addresses the question how semantically non-reportative and grammatically intransitive verbs such as be (like) and go could come to be used in English quotative constructions. It rejects analyses which evoke the notion of ‘reporting verb’ or, for like, of complementizer, and argues instead for an interclausal analysis in which clauses such as I’m like or he went as a whole are analysed as conceptually dependent on a complement clause. This analysis of the combinatorics involved in these constructions helps to explain their emergence as an analogical process in which ‘imitation clauses’ are apprehended as ‘reporting clauses’, and invites a reassessment of the extent to which this initial innovation and its further developments constitute a case of ‘grammaticalization’.

• Affiliations: 1: University of Namur and University of Leuven