In a message dated 6/8/2009 10:21:06 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
pastone@xxxxxxxxx writes:
The cool thing is that, just by watching me, my son will, even at only
just over 2 years old, automatically turn the light out when he leaves
a room (if he can reach it). And if he can't reach it, he will say
"light, light" until I lift him to the switch to turn it off. Then he
claps his hands together and says "off... good boy". And neither his
mother nor I have EVER told him to turn the light off. I think he's
got a chip installed with additional natural instincts.
----
That's _very_ interesting.
We would need a cross-cultural study. In my country of origin, people
leave
the lights on, and what's worse, they don't close the doors after they
entered places.
My mother has a saying for that,
"Are you a gypsy?"
implicature: only a gypsy lives in a _tent_ without doors.
One thing to experiment here is, in the absence of the father figure,
whether P. A. Stone's son would say,
"good boy"
I learned that expression in the feminine, "Atta girl" -- oddly used by
the
Brit council's daughter to refer to her female pet after she would sit
down.
Quino, the Argentine humorist (cartoonist) has a few cartoons figuring
"Guille", Mafalda's little brother.
I recall one that may have to do with Grice and meaning.
In the first square, Guille is trying to reach out for the tin of
biscuits.
He fails, and falls, and hits the floor with his head. He is about to cry,
but does not.
Instead, he brings a little bench, sits next to the door. He knows his
mother is out shopping.
In the last square, Guille's mother turns up with the groceries, and then,
and only then, he starts to _cry_ (desperately).
I used that example to consider what P. A. Stone thinks 'natural' versus
what Grice has as "non-natural".
I would claim that _to cry_ after a hurt, is a _natural_ thing.
So, Guille is _manipulating_ a stimulus-response chain -- and that's the
origin of 'non-natural' meaning, for Grice. For Grice _all_ meaning is
non-natural (only analogically do we say 'smoke' means "smoked salmon").
So, for the 'good boy', it seems, to use D. Wilson's parlance, it's an
'echoic' use or mention. He is echoing or mentioning other people's
(notably
his parents') use of 'good boy'.
So, under _unobserved_ circumstances one wonders if he'd say that, or skip
it as redundant?
JL Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
ps. Ah, another thing Argentine children do is leave the toilet
unflushed -- and boys especially pee on the border of the toilet rather
than
inside -- this custom is kept by some adults, male. I find the criticism
of
splashing outside the toilet is not just _female_ (who don''t need to
target)
but universal, in parts. (universalisable?)
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