WW1 slang In a message dated 6/17/2011 1:22:32 P.M., ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: My great uncle was in the artillery; my grandfather was in the infantry. They had very different wars. David Ritchie, whose last paper was on WW1 slang --- A fascinating topic. As Geary notes, I admire "Great War" songs. There's something fascinating about them. I wouldn't know what expressions are slangy and which are not, but hey. I would think that "Oh what a lovely war!" -- the musical -- contains a lot of slang. I never was able to see the apparently bad rewrite in film format with Maggie Smith -- but some of the songs of this 'revival' of genuine Great War songs are glorious: 'Make a man of any one of you' must be my favourite, plus all that hymnal rewritten stuff. ------- Partridge possibly studied this widely: "Great War" slang. Grice's father had a business with the Great War, and he later became bankrupt during the Armistice, and dedicated his life to play the violin. Grice recalled the Great War. His example of the conventional implicature of 'but' being: "'Tis the same the whole world over" --- She was poor BUT she was honest. There are zillion variants of this. My favourite in "Other men's flowers". victim of a squire's whim. ---- cfr. "And her parents were the same. till she met a city feller and she lost her honest name." --- Etc. Grice discusses the example at length in online, "Causal theory of perception", section II -- 1961, for the Aristotelian Society. Notably cancellability and detachability: "She was poor but she was honest, but I don't want to suggest any contrast between honesty and poverty as such". Lack of implicature: "She was poor AND she was honest". Etc. "In formal logic, we don't need 'but'" Grice concludes. Toulmin disagreed: "Unlike Grice thinks, we do need 'but' in logic". ----- And so on. In German, 'but' (originally by-out) is "aber". In Danish, Geary informs me, there is no 'but' about it (the Danish language). Cheers, Speranza ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html