Abstract
In present-day colloquial English, exclamatory as if denies an expressed or implied state of affairs, as in He thinks you’ll be impressed. As if. This usage is often attributed to a speech style of the 1980s and a popular television program, but OED-3 gives a 1903 instance from dialogue in an American novel. After undertaking a corpus study of exclamatory as if in present-day and historical English, this article explores the association of exclamatory as if with monoclauses or insubordinated clauses such as As if I was the one at fault. The occurrence and meaning of such clauses in present-day English are described. The article then examines the postulated derivation of as if monoclauses from full adjunct conditional clauses via processes of insubordination. Finally, the article considers an alternative development of monoclausal as if (and exclamatory as if) involving ellipsis of complement clauses in it is/looks/seem as if. . . structures rather than directly from adjunct adverbial clauses.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, exclamatory as if is “typically used as a sardonic response to a stated or reported suggestion” (OED-3, s.v. as, adv., and conj., def. P1(c)). This usage is well illustrated in a recent newspaper article about men buying gifts for women, shown in (1). 1
(1) It’s true. Bling can be meaningful. Good jewellery costs a lot, but as my friend Andrea says, “it also means that he’s thinking about your personality, your style, your looks, and that he wants to see it on you. Presumably, it means you’ll be around for a while.” . . . One of Andrea’s exes told her after he’d handed her a book that he had almost bought her Tiffany earring–but he thought maybe it was too early in their relationship. Her response: “AS IF.” (2011 Micah Toub, “A Man’s Guide to Buying Gifts for Women,” Globe and Mail, December 1)
This feature of colloquial present-day English (PDE) is not treated in standard grammars, 2 but is defined in a number of online sources as follows:
an informal form “said to show that you do not believe something is possible” (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus)
an idiomatic form “referring to something that the speaker deems highly unlikely” (Wiktionary)
an interjection expressing “incredulity” (WordWeb Online)
a “derisive assertion that whatever is being talked about is impossible or very unlikely” (The Online Slang Dictionary)
equivalent to yeah right; “used to display disbelief”; “an expression of utter repulsion and or disgust, to be said when thouroughly [sic] annoyed” (Urban Dictionary) 3
When and how might such a seemingly unusual usage—an independent utterance consisting of a subordinating conjunction—have arisen? This article begins with a corpus study, using both present-day and historical English corpora. Traditional thinking is that exclamatory as if can be attributed to so-called Valley Girl Talk, a stereotypical language variety identified in 1980s Southern California (see Hinton et al. 1987; Bucholtz et al. 2007). 4 This variety is immortalized in the movie Clueless (a takeoff on Jane Austen’s Emma, released in 1995). 5 A 1997 biography of the main actress in Clueless is titled As If! The Not-So-Clueless Alicia Silverstone (Rich 1997). As if appears in humorous comparisons of a later film adaptation of Emma with Clueless, illustrated in (2) and (3).
(2) . . . there’s little trace of Austen’s elegant style in the volleys of “y’know” and “as if!” that pour from the film’s Valley Girl-type characters. . . . (COCA: NEWS 1995)
(3) Won’t audiences be disappointed if Paltrow doesn’t say, “As if”? McGrath [the screenwriter] has a ready reply: “She does say ‘as if.’ But it’s in the middle of a sentence. Things like, ‘It is not as if I am displeased with you, Mr. Knightly.’” (TIME 1996/10/29)
The origin of exclamatory as if is also attributed to Wayne and Garth from the “Wayne’s World” vignette on the television program Saturday Night Live (this segment began to air in the late 1980s, and the first movie based on the segment came out in 1992). 6 In the early 2000s, the phrase spawned a British television program about six young people living in London and a short-lived U.S. offshoot set in Los Angeles. 7 It also appears in the title of a number of novels for young adult readers. In contrast to received opinion, however, corpus evidence reveals exclamatory as if to have originated in the early twentieth century, likely in American colloquial speech. 8
The processes by which exclamatory as if arose are explored in the second half of the article. Given similarities of form and meaning, it seems intuitively plausible that exclamatory as if derives from the so-called monoclausal uses of as if (“As if I am going to google you” [cf. 19 below]). And if monoclausal as if itself derives from a dependent clause (an adjunct adverbial clause), such a development would involve a double process of elision—the extremes of insubordination, if you will—first of the main clause and then of the content of the newly independent clause, leaving behind only the original subordinating conjunction. As will be seen, however, the historical data in fact suggest an alternative derivation of monoclausal as if (and exclamatory as if) from the ellipsis of a complement clause (it is/looks/seems as if . . .) rather than directly from an adjunct adverbial clause.
Corpus Study of Exclamatory as if
Synchronic Study
In PDE, no examples of exclamatory as if were found in the one-million word ICAME corpora (Brown, FROWN, LOB, FLOB, ACE, and WC), nor in the updated AE06 and BE06 corpora (see the “Primary Sources” section for details on the corpora used). Even the significantly larger Strathy Corpus of Canadian English (Strathy) (54,645,302 words) yielded only two examples and the TIME Magazine Corpus (TIME) (100 million words) three examples. The OED-3 quotation database provided five examples. However, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (450 million words) supplied a modest fifty-four examples, 9 of which thirty-five (64.8 percent) occurred in fiction, thirteen (24.1 percent) in news, three (5.5 percent) in magazines, two in spoken (3.7 percent), and one (1.9 percent) in academic. (Note that COCA is equally divided among these genres.) As if is typically found in recorded/represented speech or, often in fiction, in interior monologue, as in (4) through (9).
(4) “As if!” her mother would say, unprompted, at any time at all. (COCA: FIC 2000)
(5) “As if!” says Gambrell, 46. “He had no idea what I was about.” (COCA: NEWS 2006)
(6) “. . . then you can ditch me in the crowd of tourists.” She laughed. As if. He would probably need a fire hose to get her off of him. (COCA: FIC 2006)
(7) The woman who was meant to make him complete. // As if, he silently snarled. (COCA: FIC 2008)
(8) “Miss me, honey?” As if. Where’s my crab cake? (COCA: FIC 2010)
(9) Don’t worry, I’ve got a great career. I’m not a messed up drifter. As if. I test video games for a living. (COCA: FIC 2012)
But there are also instances of as if in nonspeech contexts (in narration or reporting), illustrated in (10) through (14).
(10) . . . the refurbished Bill Graham Civic Auditorium—which out-of-town journalists seem to believe is being referred to locally as “the Bill” (as if!). . . . (COCA: NEWS 1996)
(11) Laurie peppered us with so many precautions about . . . the dangers of hot-dogging (as if) that by the time we reached the summit, I was ready to stay in the van. . . . (COCA: NEWS 2000)
(12) In an early moment of invective, Biggar tells his opponent that “your mind is a puddle of curdled dog vomit.” Try to picture Mr. Black saying that line. As if. (Strathy: NEWS 2001)
(13) He is happy to wear Orvis on the Ohio River. As if. (COCA: MAG 2007)
(14) I’d begun to have that mingled sense of outrage and mourning one does when a sacred place has changed without our permission (as if!). (COCA: ACAD 2011)
The scarcity of exclamatory as if in spoken contexts in COCA (only 4 percent) is likely an artifact of the corpus, namely, the fact that most spoken data consist of transcripts of television and radio programs (i.e., relatively planned and scripted speech), not spontaneous conversation among friends and intimates. The more recently available SOAP corpus contains transcripts of television soap operas and is hence more representative of spontaneous conversation than COCA. In comparison to the two examples found in the spoken subcorpus of COCA, the roughly equivalently sized Corpus of American Soap Operas (SOAP) (100 million words as compared to 90 million words) yields seventy-three examples of exclamatory as if.
As the examples in (4) to (14) display, exclamatory as if is used in a dismissive or derisive way in response to some expressed or implied state of affairs. It expresses disbelief that this state of affairs does or will occur. For example, in (7) the male protagonist derisively rejects the idea that the woman could make him complete; in (10), the writer makes clear that local residents unequivocally do not refer to the auditorium as “the Bill”; and in (11) the author expresses the utter unlikelihood that he or she will indulge in “hot-dogging.” The ironic tone is often expressed in speech by lengthening of the vowels and rising-falling intonation.
Diachronic Study
The earliest attested example of exclamatory as if cited in OED-3 dates from 1903 (and then with a gap until 1975). It occurs in Frank Norris’s novel The Pit: A Story of Chicago, given with an expanded context in (15).
(15) “Better wait, hadn’t you, Laura,” said Aunt Wess, “and see. Maybe he’ll come up and speak to us.”
“Oh, as if!” contradicted Laura. “He don’t know us,—just as Page says. And if he did, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t think it polite.” (Norris 1903:10)
I made a (fairly) exhaustive search of Late Modern English text collections and corpora (see the references section) 10 and was unable to predate this example. My earliest example dates from a play script from 1990, given in (16).
(16) I’ll let him go. Just as soon as we’re married. (Behind IRENKA’s back and to IVAN) As if. (COHA: FIC 1990)
As OED-3’s 1903 example clearly represents the usage in question here, it seems that exclamatory as if occurred in colloquial speech (note its occurrence with nonstandard don’t in 15) at the beginning of the twentieth century, but began to appear with any frequency in writing only toward the later quarter of the century. Although evidence is spotty (OED-3 has citations from 1975 and 1991), it seems clear that exclamatory as if does not originate in Valley Girl talk. As Sheidlower and Lighter (1993:218) observe about the similar record of interjective not (see note 8), “although chance reinvention of the usage cannot be discounted, it is a least equally reasonable to see the tenuous survival of well-attested earlier usage being revivified on Saturday Night Live.” Exclamatory as if was surely spread and popularized by its occurrence in this “dialect.”
The effect of popular television programs and movies on the adoption and spread of as if can be considered a case of an “off-the-shelf” change. Contrasting “under-the-counter” changes, which are dependent on close-knit networks and intense local interaction, Milroy (2007), adopting a term from Eckert (2003), describes off-the-shelf changes as supralocal; they are easily accessible and “relatively freely available to appropriately positioned social actors as a stylistic and social resource” (Milroy 2007:152). Many changes associated with “youth norms,” such as the rapid spread of quotative like, fall into the category of off-the-shelf changes. Such changes have been observed for a long time and are often associated with globalization, increased mobility and social fragmentation, and the effects of social media.
Monoclausal as if Constructions
Exclamatory as if must, in the first instance, be assumed to originate in the homophonous subordinating conjunction. The typical function of this subordinating conjunction is to introduce a finite or nonfinite clause expressing the conditional meaning ‘as the case would be if’ (see OED-3, s.v. as adv. and conj, def. P1(a) and (b)), as illustrated in (17) and (18).
(17) He laughed as if I had said something annihilatingly funny. . . . (1991 N. Bawden, Women of My Age 35; OED-3)
(18) They deal with us as if we are a former colony that should subjugate itself to their will. . . . (COCA: NEWS 2012)
The conjunction as if (also as though) combines an element of similarity (as) with an element of hypotheticality (if, though) to form a complex subordinator signaling comparison (Kortmann 1997:318), but this similarity is “not to be taken factually” (Biber et al. 1999:840). In addition to comparison, both subordinators may express manner, especially with a dynamic verb (Quirk et al. 1985:1110; Biber et al. 1999:843; Huddleston & Pullum 2002:1151). The clause introduced by as if functions as an adjunct adverbial.
López-Couso and Méndez-Naya (2012a, 2012b) argue that as if and as though, especially with be, seem, appear, and feel (as in “It seemed as if she were always auditioning”), can also function to introduce finite declarative clauses that function as complements, not adverbial adjuncts. The complement status of these clauses is shown by their obligatory nature (*It seemed), the possibility of replacement by unambiguous complements (It seemed that she was always auditioning”) or conjunction with such clauses, and their failure to move to typical adverbial position (*“As if she were always auditioning, it seemed”) (López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012a:316). I will return to this structure below.
Clauses beginning with as if as well as as though (and less often) like can also stand alone as independent clauses, as shown in (19) through (21).
(19) Merriam Webster Dictionary says its official, google, the popular search engine is now part of the English language as a verb. As if I’m going to google you. (COCA: SPOK 2006) 11
(20) Doug has exposed me. As though somehow I’m the bad guy in this. (COCA: SPOK 2009)
(21) I heard James’s voice. I want you to do it up big—new dress, hair, nails, the works. Like I needed his permission for this? (COCA: FIC 2012)
The existence of such clauses has been noted by a number of scholars, all of whom see the clauses as having exclamatory force. Fowler (1965:37) points to the “still more elliptical” use of as if and as though in exclamations such as “{As if, as though} you didn’t know that!” Huddleston and Pullum (2002:1152) likewise term as if and as though clauses standing on their own as “exclamatory clauses”: “As if I would try to cheat you!” In a corpus study of PDE, López-Couso and Méndez-Naya (2012a:324, 2012b:181) find nineteen instances of independent as if and as though clauses, which they see as having “an elided matrix of the kind it is/seems/appears/looks, etc.” and thus functioning originally as complement clauses, as noted above (e.g., “As though that mattered to me.” “As if she would ever forget . . .”). Fifteen of these they see as having the illocutionary force of exclamations. Similarly, Quirk et al. (1985:842)—discussing a variety of “irregular sentences,” which include forms marked as subordinate—point to the use of if only sentences such as “If only I’d listened to my parents!” They argue that such sentences generally have the illocutionary force of exclamations, “the omission of the matrix clause being mimetic of speechless amazement” (1985:841). Only Declerck (1992:223) does not refer to the exclamatory value of independent as if clauses, which he sees as resulting from the dropping of a main clause it is. 12
Dancygier and Sweetser (2005:229, 217-219) discuss the “monoclausal” use of as if constructions (“As if I cared!,” “As if it made any difference!”) and similar uses of if only constructions (“If only he would stop drinking!”). Similarly, Stirling (1999) treats what he calls “isolated if-clauses,” which he sees as having either a directive function (e.g., “If you’d like to get dressed now.” [spoken by a doctor to a patient]) or an optative function (e.g., “If only Kitty had not done everything without her!” [counterfactual] or “If only Miss Hawkins would get a job!” [non-counterfunctional]); he notes that OED-3 (s.v. if, conj., and n., def. A7) describes this type of structure as an “exclamation” to express a wish or surprise, giving examples from Old English. All of these structures belong to what Evans (2007:367; see also Heine 2012) terms “insubordination”: “conventionalized main clause use of what, on prima facie grounds, appear to be formally subordinate clauses.” Though neither Evans nor Heine cites monoclausal as if clauses, they refer to similar constructions such as “Wenn Sie sich vielleicht die Hände waschen möchten?” ‘If you could perhaps wash your hands’ (Evans 2007:373) and “If you could give me a couple of 39c stamps please” (Evans 2007:380; Heine 2012). 13
In PDE, monoclausal as if constructions typically occur as independent sentences or are occasionally attached to the following sentence, as in (22).
(22) As if this wasn’t bad enough, Anon was also the sitting target for an unceasing barrage of surreal orders which came from a remote and fantastical place called GHO. (Strathy: FIC 2001)
Importantly, however, they do not occur in sentence-medial or final position. 14 Clauses in such position always express conditional or manner meanings.
A study of as if clauses in Strathy found that the percentage of monoclausal constructions compared to all sentence-initial or independent as if clauses ranged from a low of 24 percent in the academic genre to a high of 100 percent in the spoken genre (see Table 1). 15 The number of as if monoclauses in the spoken genre is low, despite the relatively large size of this subcorpus, 16 probably because, like COCA, the spoken component of Strathy consists of transcripts of public hearings, television programs, and so on, not spontaneous conversation.
Sentence-Initial as if Clauses in the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English.
Monoclausal as if can be short and relatively simple, as shown in (23) and (24).
(23) He’ll go with us to the hospital. Okay?” As if I had a choice. (Strathy: FIC 1984)
(24) Mother said, “As if I were the one at fault.” (COCA: FIC 2000)
But they can also be long, complex, and novel, as in (25) and (26).
(25) As if Notting Hill’s ladies who lunch were not already spoilt for choice when it comes to exclusive shopping experiences. (1999 Sunday Times November 18 ii. 4/2; OED-3)
(26) As if a state spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make millionaires even more millionaire-ish is ‘noble.’ (1995 Sun [Baltimore] November 8 1b; OED-3)
A particularly common collocation is that with (negative) enough; in fact, all of the examples of monoclausal as if in the magazine, news, nonfiction, and spoken genres included in Table 1 occur with enough, illustrated in (27) through (29). 17
(27) As if pregnancy wasn’t uncomfortable enough. (Strathy: SPOK 2002)
(28) As if the poor woman hasn’t been through enough,” he calls back. (COCA: FIC 2009)
(29) “You too?” As if the rest of the town weren’t enough. (COCA: FIC 2010)
According to Huddleston and Pullum (2002:1151), monoclausal as if presents the content clause as false; it is used to express “indignant rejection” (e.g., “As if I would try to cheat you!”). Similarly, Dancygier and Sweetser (2005:229) note that monoclausal as if in examples such as “As if I cared!” or “As if it made any difference!” is used “to indicate that the speaker does not care, or that it makes no difference” and thus appropriately occurs with negative stance verbs. Thus, we see in the examples above that “Mother” is adamantly rejecting the idea that it is her fault (24) or the speaker is pointing out that pregnancy is indeed uncomfortable (enough) (27).
In a longer discussion of the similar if only monoclauses (e.g., “If only there was a camera that captured smells”), Dancygier and Sweetser (2005:217-219) observe that if has lost its conditional meaning. It has come to express a wish, one which the speaker knows to be impossible, yet desirable; thus, it carries the speaker’s positive emotional stance and negative epistemic stance. The wish sense can be interpreted as the “sole conventional meaning” (2005:218) of the construction, which functions as a performative (very close to “I wish there was a camera that captured smells”). This is a change that tends toward more subjective meaning (the speaker’s wish, rather than the expressed referential content) (2005:219n). Significantly, because of the performative function of monoclausal if only, it is syntactically nonembeddable.
Huddleston and Pullum (2002:1151-1152) also note the loss of comparative meaning in the special uses of as if clauses. For example, in “She acts as if she hates me,” there is a “shift from comparison to the issue of whether the content clause is true,” leading to “It looks/seems as if she hates me.” In a construction such as “As if this news wasn’t bad enough, I found that the printer wasn’t working either,” as if always has a negative complement and indicates that the content clause (i.e., that the printer is not working) is true: “again it is less a matter of comparison than of the status of the content clause” (2002:1152).
Evans (2007) notes that insubordinated clauses may have a negative function and may be used “in contexts where the corresponding affirmative has been mentioned, deemed likely, or where the speaker assumes that the hearer—erroneously—holds to a belief in the truth of that affirmative” (Givón 1979:107, cited by Evans 2007:410). We see that as if monoclauses may be used in the cases where an affirmative assumption is being denied and a negative asserted (“As if I had a choice”: this is a denial of the assumption that you had a choice and assertion that you did not have a choice) but also in cases where a negative assumption is being denied and a positive asserted (“As if I didn’t know”: this is a denial of the assumption that you didn’t know and an assertion that you did know). That is, there is always reverse polarity. Furthermore, the speaker presupposes that the hearer agrees with the negative of the clause asserted. In respect primarily to insubordinated that clauses (e.g., “{That I should/to think that I should} live to see such a day!”), Evans (2007:403-405) also notes their use for modality, for example, exclamation and evaluation, a function we also see in the case of as if monoclauses; in these cases, the speaker, through the emotive quality of the construction, solicits the hearer’s agreement to the clause asserted.
Schwenter (1996:324) provides a detailed discussion of independent clauses with si ‘if’ in Spanish of the following type: Speaker A: “Oh look what a cool jacket.” B: “Girl, please SI it’s horrible (si es horrible).” These clauses are adversative; they serve as speech acts of denial or disagreement: “they all deal with correcting or modifying underlying pragmatic presuppositions that have been evoked (or inferred) in conversation” (1996:328). Pragmatic presuppositions concern knowledge, but also expectations, desires, interests, claims, and attitudes. Independent si-clauses in Spanish thus assert a background that is incompatible with some aspect of a prior utterance. Like speech act conditionals (e.g., “if you yourself gave it to me last week, how can you take it away from me today?”), these si-clauses do not have conditional meaning. They express factuality (rather like dado que ‘given that’) and internal speaker opinion rather than hypotheticality. The speaker presents his or her opinion as if it were the case (1996:324). Schwenter (1996:340-341) observes that independent si-clauses bear a similarity to indicative counterfactual conditionals such as the following: Speaker A: “I’m the Pope.” Speaker B. “If you’re the Pope, then I’m the Empress of China.” The if-clauses here express emphatic disagreement (“that’s absurd”). Rather than expressing condition, they make a strong assertion (see Quirk et al. 1985:1094, who classify this type of if clause as a “rhetorical conditional clause”). 18
A similar argument can be made concerning as if monoclauses. Returning to (24), for example (“As if I were the one at fault”), we see that as if has lost its meaning of condition or manner. “Mother” is contesting or rejecting an implied view (implicit or stated) that she was the one at fault. At the same time she is expressing negative epistemic stance: she is asserting that she is not the one at fault. The original meaning of condition or manner is contained in the implied view: Someone either acted as if or said something to suggest that she was at fault. Like if only monoclauses, as if monoclauses have a performative sense (refutation/denial) and are not syntactically embeddable (*“She said that as if she were the one at fault”).
Monoclausal as if constructions thus bear a strong semantic affinity with exclamatory as if. Both structures have lost their conditional meaning, express negative epistemic stance, have the performative force of a denial/refutation, and express the speaker’s exclamatory/evaluative attitude. Thus the semantic development clearly shows an increase in both subjectivity and intersubjectivity (see López-Couso 2010).
The Origin and Development of Monoclausal as if
Origin in Complete Sentential Structures
It has been argued in the literature that monoclauses derive from a structurally complete sentence consisting of a matrix clause to which the if/if only/as if clause attaches as an adverbial adjunct. For example, Huddleston and Pullum (2002:1152) suggest that the sentence “As if this news wasn’t bad enough, I found that the printer wasn’t working either” is the structurally complete version of a monoclause such as “As if I didn’t have enough on my plate as it was!” 19 Schwenter (1996) likewise postulates an ellipted main clause for Spanish independent si clauses. Thus si es horrible in response to “Look what a great jacket” in the example given above actually derives from a complete structure on the lines of “If it is horrible, why do you say that” (Schwenter 1996:331) or “everyone knows that the jacket is undesirable, so how on earth could you say that you like it?” (1996:324). According to Schwenter (1996:331), “one can often reconstruct an accompanying implied speech-act apodosis. This implied apodosis poses a general question about an interlocutor’s prior utterance, along the lines of ‘How could you/Why would you say/think/believe such a thing?’” Finally, the view of insubordinated clauses as deriving diachronically from subordinate clauses attached to a matrix clause has been developed most fully by both Evans (2007) and Heine (2012).
Processes of Insubordination
It is generally agreed that independent if/if only/as if clauses should not be understood as incomplete utterances or as the result of ellipsis alone (see Stirling 1999). 20 Rather, it is argued that monoclauses develop from a process of insubordination; this involves loss of the matrix clause and reanalysis of the original subordinate clause as a main clause. Evans (2007:371-375, 430-431) postulates the following steps in the derivation of insubordinated clauses:
subordinate construction with overt main clause, i.e., “the normal situation”;
ellipsis of the main clause;
conventionalized ellipsis; and
reanalysis as conventionalized main clause.
At stage 2, the clause can be treated as underlyingly subordinate, with the possibility of restoring a grammatically compatible main clause (Evans 2007:372, 430). For example, an insubordinated clause such as German “ob diese Wortstellung zulässig ist” ‘whether this word order is permissible’ might suggest a main clause such as “seems doubtful to me” or “this article makes clear, as to.” There may be syntactic evidence for the presence of a particular main clause; for example, a negative polarity item like ever or any (“That I’ll ever give you any money!”) can be accounted for by an ellipted negative matrix clause (“You don’t believe”). But Evans (2007) admits that it is difficult to say whether there are any limits on which ellipted clauses can acceptably be reconstituted. At stage 3, the clause has achieved greater semantic specificity and only a subset of ellipted main clauses can be restored. The ellipted main clauses can be very general (“It would be nice . . .”) (2007:373) or on account of the restriction of the interpretation of ellipted material, very specific (2007:372-373). At stage 4, the clause is fully nativized as a main clause, with a meaning of its own, and restoration of the ellipted material is not possible. When the subordinate clause becomes independent, it assumes pragmatic meaning (2007:374-375). Heine (2012:secs. 3, 5) likewise argues that the insubordinated clause is historically derived from a full construction, in the course of which change the main clause is ellipted via “co-optation.” Thus “If you could give me a couple of 39c stamps please” (Evans 2007:380; Heine 2012) derives from “{I wonder, I’d be most grateful} if you could give me a couple of 39c stamps please.”
Scholars allow that certain difficulties exist for the “reconstruction” of the ellipted main clause, however. Stirling (1999:290) points out that the “postulated ellipted material cannot be readily supplied from linguistic context, at least with any degree of specificity.” Heine (2012:secs. 3, 5) notes that reconstruction is “hypothetical” and that “it is perhaps in most cases not possible to reconstruct the exact form of the ellipted matrix clause,” though the structure of the clause provides “some clues for reconstructing at least some contours of that form.” He also admits (2012:sec. 5) that there is no diachronic evidence for the reconstruction; there is only synchronic evidence. Evans (2007:371, 374) is similarly cautious; what is restored or reconstructed is “determined by a process of conversational inference,” but once constructionalization has occurred it may not be possible to restore any ellipted material. Dancygier and Sweetser (2005:218) conclude that with monoclausal if-clauses, the apodosis is left “to the hearer’s contextually prompted construction,” and Declerck (1992:223) likewise calls as if monoclauses inferential: “they express what the speaker infers to be a possible interpretation of a given situation.” Schwenter (1996:331) does not seem entirely convinced of derivation from a full biclausal structure either, but for different reasons: “it seems incorrect to consider independent si-clauses as simply instances of a conditional where the main clause speech act has been elided.” He points out that si-clauses may provide motivation for the illocutionary act in the (implied) apodosis, but they typically have a more perlocutionary purpose, where speakers try to modify interlocutors’ assumptions. He speaks of the “apparent shift from subordinate to main clause status” (1996:346).
In the development of exclamatory as if, a second stage of development occurs. This can be understood either as insubordination, involving loss of the content of the as if clause and its reanalysis as an independent utterance, or as a process of ellipsis involving deletion of the content of the monoclause, leaving behind only the original subordinating conjunction (as if). But what would motivate the further ellipsis of the content of the clause? Evans (2007:413) suggests that in certain languages, when negative insubordinated clauses arise, the subordinating morphology may be reanalyzed as negative morphology. If a similar process is at work here, then we can see the conjunction as if itself acquiring the “negative” or “denial” sense (see below). Since the proposition it denies is already stated or implied in the discourse, the remainder of the clause is expendable, thus leading to further ellipsis.
The Development of as if Monoclauses in English
Syntactically, in the scenario proposed above, the rise of monoclausal as if would proceed via deletion of the main clause followed by ellipsis of the content of the newly independent, leaving behind only the original subordinating conjunction (as if). Semantically, we would see a change from the original manner/comparison meaning of as if to the semantic notion of denial, with an expressive or evaluative overlay.
In English, it might be possible to argue for a full clause origin, on account of sentences such as (30) and (31).
(30) You’re going to put the parent in jail who just lost their child.
(31) . . . I don’t believe this,” she said.
In both examples it is possible to delete the main clause of the underlined sentence, ending up with an as if monoclause. Main clauses such as “you act” or “she spoke” refer to the holding of some belief by the hearer/reader/character, which is subsequently denied—that is, it is not murder, Jasmin is there. A cursory examination of corpus data suggests, however, that an as if clause with verbs such as act or speak overwhelmingly expresses manner or comparison, as shown in (32) and (33).
(32) She spoke as if she had to stop and think about each word. (COCA: FIC 2008)
(33) But then he proceeds to act as if the crime was the fault of the gun. (COCA: NEWS 2011)
The semantic development from comparison/manner to denial can plausibly be established via indeterminate (or “bridging”) contexts, with a shift in meaning from A > A/B > B, as in (34) through (37).
(34) They both look at Lesje as she walks by, not smiling but not hostile either. As if they are sightseers and she is a sight. (Strathy: FIC 1979)
(35) “John and I have really stabilized.” As if stability can be bought like a pair of slippers. (Strathy: FIC 1999)
(36) Elizabeth fills him in on the children—their marks, their latest interests—as if he hasn’t talked to them for a year. As if he’s an uncle, a new school principal. I’m their father! (Strathy: FIC 1979)
(37) “Over ten pounds,” he sounded as proud as a natural father. As if he could have done the job himself. (Strathy: FIC 1985)
In (34) the as if monoclause is unambiguously comparative, equivalent to ‘They are looking at her like /in the manner of sightseers.’ It does not plausibly mean ‘They are not sightseers and she is not a sight.’ In (35) and (36), on the other hand, the meaning would appear to be indeterminately comparative or negative. That is, (35) can mean either ‘She is speaking/acting as if stability can be bought like a pair of slippers’ (i.e., comparative) or ‘Stability cannot be bought like a pair of slippers’ (i.e., denial); (36) can be interpreted either as ‘She is speaking/acting as if he hasn’t talked to them for a year / as if he’s an uncle’ (comparative) or as ‘he has talked to them in the last year / he isn’t their uncle’ (denial). Such indeterminacy thus facilitates the move to the unambiguous denial reading of (37), namely, ‘he couldn’t have done the job himself’ (i.e., borne a baby).
The new (‘denial’) meaning is the result of what Evans (2007:374-375) sees as “pragmaticization” followed by “constructionalization.” First, when the subordinate clause becomes independent, it is “available for pragmatic interpretation” and is less grammatical (pragmaticization), namely, the illocutionary force of denial. Then, when the (formerly) subordinate clause is conventionalized as a whole (and independent) construction, it acquires “a more specific constructional meaning” (constructionalization), namely, the exclamatory/evaluative attitude of the speaker.
What do we find when we set out to study monoclauses in historical corpora? Can we find historical evidence in English supporting the postulated origin of monoclausal as if as full comparative structures? Is there evidence of the stages postulated by Evans? Is reconstruction possible? The earliest examples of monoclausal as if I found in the corpora surveyed (see “Primary Sources”) occurred in the mid- to late sixteenth century (examples 38 through 40). 21
(38) As if, for example, the right of the kings of England did depend on the goodness of the cause of William the Conqueror, and upon their lineal and directest descent from him; (1551 Hobbes, Leviathan, or, The Matter, Forme; U of V)
(39) As if a Commonwealth could consist where the force were in any hand which justice had not the authority to command and govern. (1551 Hobbes, Leviathan, or, The Matter, Forme; U of V)
(40) As if one should phantasy to praise a Gose before any other beast. . . . (1553 T. Wilson, Arte of Rhetorique; OED-3)
The earliest examples of similar “exclamatory clauses” found by López-Couso and Méndez-Naya (2012a:324) are in the period 1570 to 1640, corresponding to my findings. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the structures become somewhat more common, though overall they are comparatively rare. Illustrative examples are given in (41) through (47).
(41) As if a theefe should be proud of his halter: a beggar of his cloutes: a childe of his gay. (1601 Dent, Path-Way to Heaven; OED-3)
(42) (Ma.) As if I haue not a good dish of Oysters, and a cold pye at home to hold you tacke. (1615 Hoby, A Cvrry-Combe for a Coxe-Combe; CED)
(43) As if I did not know them to bee as arrant Cowards, as a Justices Clerke or Gentleman Vsher can be; (1638 Nabbes, Covent Garden; ED)
(44) As if he were not also a part of the commonwealth, and the head of the whole people! (1689 Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration; U of V)
(45) . . . as if I went aboute to saue my Lyfe: no, I despise it and am at peace wth god and have forgott the world (1691 Trial of the Earl of Essex; HC)
(46) As if Treaties could be made like Acts of Parliament, (1730 Hervey, Observations; Lamp)
(47) As if Ostend was of no more consequence to us, than Mons or Namur! (1735-48 Walpole, Letters; CLMETEV)
If we look at the larger context of one of the earliest examples, (39) from Hobbes’s Leviathan, chapter 26 “Of Civil Laws”: Item, that the two arms of a Commonwealth are force and justice; the first whereof is in the king, the other deposited in the hands of the Parliament. As if a Commonwealth could consist where the force were in any hand which justice had not the authority to command and govern.
We see that the denial sense also seems already to be fully developed. 22 Hobbes’s point here is that a Commonwealth cannot exist in such circumstances. The construction is used as part of a rhetorical strategy in a developing argument in which it refutes an implied position (that a Commonwealth can exist in such circumstances). “Reconstruction” of a main clause is both difficult and unnecessary in such cases.
Thus, in even the oldest instances, monoclausal as if already seems highly conventionalized and fully developed. The four-step scenario outlined by Evans (2007), though intuitively plausible, is impossible to establish based on historical evidence. We do not find—and cannot reconstruct—either the full clausal structures the theory postulates or the indeterminate structures and bridging contexts suggested by the semantic development, although I would have to admit that limitations in the data may be relevant here. The full sentential structure is quite rare at all stages of the language.
Alternative Analysis
López-Couso and Méndez-Naya (2012a, 2012b) argue that the “basic” use of as if, as though, and like clauses in introducing adverbial clauses of comparison or similarity (as in 48) leads to their “secondary” use as complement clauses (as in 49) occurring with copular verbs (be or evidential verbs such as look, sound, appear).
(48) He talks as if he has a potato in his mouth. . . . (Quirk et al. 1985:1110, quoted in López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012b:173)
(49) The landlord, a plump and harassed man named Barry, looked as if he had spent too much time enjoying his own product. . . . (FLOB A33; quoted in López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012b:182)
The adverbial uses are in existence from early Middle English. The complement clause use of as though arises in Late Middle English and the complement use of as if in Early Modern English (López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012b:177); furthermore, this use is “very likely derived from the original adverbial use” (López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012a:322).
Declerck (1992:222-223) suggests that monoclausal as if develops synchronically from structures such as (50) in which the main clause it is is dropped.
(50) There came no sounds from the house. It was as if the whole house was empty.
In including examples of monoclausal as if clauses in their discussion of as if (and as though and like) as complement clauses, López-Couso and Méndez-Naya (2012a:324, 2012b:181) suggest a similar origin from a diachronic point of view.
The shift from complement clause to monoclause is intuitively plausible, on both semantic and syntactic grounds. Syntactically, the most common—and earliest—structures with complement as if/as though contain subject it plus the verbs (not) be, appear, (not) look, seem, and impersonal think (López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012a:322-323); therefore, the syntactic development from full matrix clause-subordinate clause structure to monoclausal structure could easily involve deletion of the dummy subject and of the semantically “empty” copula verb.
Semantically, the copula-complement clause structures involve loss of conditional meaning in the as if clause as the notion of equation or comparison is taken over by the matrix copula clause (López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012b:183, p.c.). Although copula-complement clause structures are not inherently negative, 23 they often express counterfactuality or negation, as in (51) and (52), where the content of the as if clause is explicitly negated.
(51)
(52) . . . this is a sign of an intense power struggle, much more intense than the outside world appreciates.
That is, the worst does not happen (there is “no massive backlash”) and Jiang Zemin is not in control. López-Couso and Méndez-Naya (2012a:324-325, 2012b:183-184) note that the complement constructions (as opposed to the adverbial constructions) are “heavily constrained by the semantics of the matrix predicate.” The matrix expresses an attitude toward the truth of the proposition expressed in the complement. It conveys epistemic modality, or a weakened or low degree of speaker commitment. It may also express emotional reaction or judgment. As discussed above, monoclausal as if constructions express negative epistemic stance, have the performative force of a denial/refutation, and express the speaker’s exclamatory/evaluative attitude. The step from complement clause to monoclause would thus involve semantic strengthening from epistemic uncertainty to denial.
The final step in the development discussed here is the deletion of the content of the as if clause, leaving behind only the complementizer (the content of the clause being inferable from context). The development postulated here is set out in Figure 1.
Postulated development of exclamatory as if.
The relationship between monoclausal as if and complement as if requires further explanation, but this derivation seems more plausible, both syntactically and semantically, than seeing monoclausal as if as developing directly from the adjunct clause.
Conclusion
Exclamatory as if is a feature of colloquial English used dismissively to express denial of a asserted or implied state of affairs (“Try to picture Mr. Black saying that line. As if.” [cf. 12]). Intuitively it would seem to be associated with monoclausal as if (“As if I were the one at fault” [cf. 24]), with which it shares the semantics of denial. Theories of insubordination argue that monoclauses derive from full sentential structures, though hesitancy is expressed concerning the possibility of reconstructing the ellipted main clause. Moreover, this analysis is admitted to be hypothetical, without diachronic support. Following this path of development, exclamatory as if would involve extreme ellipsis: of both the main clause and of the content of the as if clause, leaving behind only the subordinating conjunction functioning as an independent utterance. The historical study of this article has called into question the derivation of monoclausal as if from an adverbial clause adjoined to a main clause, as the postulated main clauses prove impossible to reconstruct. Rather, the historical data point to an alternative origin, deriving as if monoclauses instead from complement clauses following evidential verbs such as seem, look, or feel. Future research into other phenomena of insubordination—e.g., PDE whatever—may serve to (dis)confirm received opinion (e.g., Evans 2007) concerning the rise of insubordinated clauses.
In conclusion, I note an interesting curiosity. As though may occur in monoclausal exclamatory structures, though it is rare in PDE, with eight examples in the SOAP corpus. An example is given in (53).
(53) Are these petty games fun for you? Canceling my credit cards to what? Show me who’s boss? As though I need them. As though I don’t have my own money. . . . (SOAP: Days 2010)
Monoclausal as though structures can be found quite early (1500-1570) (López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012a:324), as in (54).
(54) As though all the crookedness of our disposition were not accidental. (1578 T. Timme tr. J. Calvin, Comm. Gen. 84; OED-3)
But no examples of exclamatory As though! are found in my other corpora, leading one to wonder why as if undergoes the “extremes of insubordination,” but as though does not. The relative degree of formality of as though compared with as if comes to mind, though López-Couso and Méndez-Naya (2012b:189) find as if to be the most formal of the three (as if, as though, and like), with all closely associated with spoken language. The frequency of as if versus as though also does not appear to be an explanatory factor: while as though declined in the Early and Late Modern periods, it attained the same level of usage as as if in the twentieth century (López-Couso & Méndez-Naya 2012a:320). Overall, López-Couso and Méndez-Naya (2012a:320) find “no categorical semantic difference” between as if and as though during their recorded history.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article has benefited from the astute reading of María-José López-Couso and Belén Méndez-Naya, and I am grateful for comments from the audience at the second ISLE (International Society for the Linguistics of English) meeting in Boston in 2011.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Author Biography
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