Peeking into the socio-historical background and current use of ‘me (no) likey’

Abstract

The verb to like has fallen repeatedly under the gaze of scholars. One aspect which has stimulated vigorous discussion is its original use in impersonal constructions and its later change of argument structure along with the disappearance of impersonals from English. Nonetheless, evidence from current informal English shows that like is now used in constructions which bear a close resemblance to the older impersonals, although always displaying alternative spelling variants, especially likey. This paper seeks to further our understanding of the verb to like, focusing specifically on these new constructions. To this end I will use likey as a generic label to refer to such new uses and constructions, regardless of variations in spelling (unless otherwise stated). Using data from the Corpus of Historical American English and iWeb Corpus, the study will seek to answer the following research questions: RQ1. What are the morpho-syntactic features of the expression ‘me (no) likey’ in Present-Day English? RQ2. What is the origin of the sequence ‘me (no) likey’? RQ3. Where do phrasal patterns with likey fall on the continuum of idiomaticity (Michaelis, 2017)?