From today's Quinion's World Wide Words ((c) Michael Quinion
http://www.wordwidewords.org. Quinion is discussing the expression ;'lame duck'
as per a citation of 1761:
"Apropos, do you know what a Bull, and a Bear, and a Lame Duck are? Nay, nor I
either: I am only certain that they are neither animals or fowl." (Walpole).
Quinion writes:
"Incidentally, I can find no examples of lame duck being used literally before
it took on this sense. This casts doubt on the commonly stated view that failed
financiers were called lame ducks because they resembled an injured bird that
was unable to keep up with the flock and so was more vulnerable to being
attacked by a predator. And the failures of lame ducks in any case were usually
due to their over-stretching themselves in speculative ventures, not being
brought down by others."
This seems premature. A computer scientist who was into Grice once said:
i. An implicature is not like a baby. An unwanted baby is still a baby; but an
unwanted implicature is a contradictio in terminis.
The idea being that for x to be an implicature it has to be intended as such.
Quinion:
"I can find no examples of lame duck being used literally before it took on
this sense. This casts doubt on the commonly stated view that failed financiers
were called lame ducks because they resembled an injured bird that was unable
to keep up with the flock and so was more vulnerable to being attacked by a
predator."
I think this is premature, as I say, since it fits the topic of what I call a
premature implicature. Consider Popper's favourite utterance (he learned it
from Tarski on a bench in a park in Vienna):
ii. Snow is white.
It may well be that 'snow' (or 'white') later acquire figurative implicatures
(metaphor is an implicature for Grice, his example: 'You're the cream in my
coffee'); yet this does not refudiate the idea that (ii) has a literal sense
(and the only one at that).
With
iii. There goes a lame duck.
the sense (for utterances also have senses, you know) is, to paraphrase Quinion:
iv. There goes a duck that is inured and unable to keep up with the flock of
other ducks and, you see, is more vulnerable to being attacked by a predator.
A financier need not get into the picture until later. The implicature is
premature when, as a "matter of history" ("the history of the language," as
Grice has it), the figuration predates the literalness of the stuff. Or stuff.
Quinion is Popperian guarded. Or guardedly Popperian: "this cast doubts", or
"seems to cast a doubt," as I prefer. Because it certainly does not refudiate
Grice. For Grice, lingo is compositional. The logical form of (iii) is
v. (Ex) Dx & Lx
There exists an x such as x is a duck and x is lame.
Financiers come in only implicated, if prematurely so. But Popper might
disagree (just to refute or refudiate others).
Quinion adds:
"And the failures of lame ducks in any case were usually due to their
over-stretching themselves in speculative ventures, not being brought down by
others." While an apt remark, it still does not refudiate the theoretical issue
of an implicature being premature --. To be more formal: an expression (or
strictly, the utterer U of an expression E) invites a premature implicature
when the implicatum, as a matter of the history of language, is invited BEFORE
the utterer U utters the expression E _literally_. "Premature" as applied to
'implicature' is of course implicatural (metaphorical, specifically) and there
may be better literal ways to express the species.
Cheers,
Speranza
