It's like 120 milliseconds

Abstract

This thesis addresses the discourse and quotative marker functions of like from a grammaticalization perspective. Many of the functions share a polysemous thread of meaning because of their historical relatedness; in particular, the marker functions grammaticalized from the function words. Grammaticalization has certain features which characterize it, including phonological reduction. Though the marker functions of like are not yet segmentally changed from the functions from which they grammaticalized, this study hypothesizes that the durations of the grammaticalized morphemes will be shorter than the nongrammaticalized forms. To test this hypothesis, the speech of four young-adult speakers from the Buckeye corpus was analyzed regarding the durations of five functions of like, though the hypothesis was not upheld. In fact, the marker functions were found to have the longest mean durations.