grammar - Please explain "I Am America (And So Can You!)"


As a non-native speaker, I found Stephen Colbert’s book title I Am America (And So Can You!) a little hard to dissect. Why so can you? Why isn’t it So Are You? What’s the full phrase that And So Can You implies?



Answer



It's a play on titles from self help programs which utilize ellipsis. For example



I lost 20 pounds in 4 days, and so can you.



This is a kind of strange ellipsis, because just tacking on "[lose 20 pounds in 4 days]" doesn't really create a grammatical sentence, but it's something like that. The ellipsis would be clearer if the sentences were



I lost 20 pounds in 4 days, and you can [lose 20 pounds in 4 days] too.


I am America, and you can [be America] too.



And the ellipsis is not so great with "to be", either. Here's some discussion from Language Log:


http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004522.html


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