serve & serve as or serve like ?

[dashllh]

Good morning!
What king of words or phrases we can put behind "serve" compared with that we can put behind "serve as"?Is there an abstract meaning of "as" or something like we can use to differ "serve as" from "serve"?Can we say "serve like"?
Thanks in advance!

[Coffa]

Good morning!
What king of words or phrases we can put behind "serve" compared with that we can put behind "serve as"?Is there an abstract meaning of "as" or something like we can use to differ "serve as" from "serve"?Can we say "serve like"?
Thanks in advance!

"I serve my master" means only that I do service to my master.

"I serve as an interpreter to my master" means my service is only in the role of interpreter.

"I am no slave, but I am forced to serve like one" means my service is the same as the service that a slave would do.

Does this help?

[dashllh]

That's enough for me to distinguish the three.
Thank you very much!Coffa.

[Humble]

Hi,
But in AE they do use like instead of as; or am I seeing things?

[MikeNewYork]

Hi,
But in AE they do use like instead of as; or am I seeing things?

In what function?

[Humble]

Well, exactly, to denote a function and not resemblance.

[MikeNewYork]

Well, exactly, to denote a function and not resemblance.

Then, I'd have to say no.

Serving as an interpreter, not like an interpreter.

[Humble]

What about this:
The commemoration ceremony is to begin at noon. Commemoration serves as an adjective.
I've often seen such sentences and I don't understand - we're talking about the function, aren't we? But adjectives can have different functions. Adjective is a morphological, not syntactic term.
Taking into consideration that their main function is describing some quality we could only compare commemoration with an adjective, so I'd use like, not as.

[MikeNewYork]

What about this:
The commemoration ceremony is to begin at noon. Commemoration serves as an adjective.
I've often seen such sentences and I don't understand - we're talking about the function, aren't we? But adjectives can have different functions. Adjective is a morphological, not syntactic term.
Taking into consideration that their main function is describing some quality we could only compare commemoration with an adjective, so I'd use like, not as.

But "as" is real; like is similar to. "Commemoration is not "like" an adjective; it is an adjective.

[Humble]

Oh, is it?
That means I wrongly ascribed the problem to AE-BE as vs like differences while there's just a divide in grammar conceptions, which is not to be debated on (in?) this thread.
OK, another example:
Just after tea she drank a cup of coffee, like she always did.

I know, it should beas she always did. How common is this mistake in AE-BE?