[lit-ideas] Chomsky's Female Dogs
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:26:38 EDT
In a message dated 4/21/2008 9:06:13 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
For example, if you call a woman a female dog in Tuareq, that's
a compliment, just like in English, just ask JL.
----
Well, yes.
Chomsky analyses this in terms of semantic predicates:
Consider 'bitch'.
For Chomsky, the semantic structure is indeed as Geary has it:
+CANIS -MALE
For Chomsky, 'female' is '- male'. All features are binary (in MIT)
Now, Harnish, who also studied in MIT, found out that the principle violets
Grice (He wrote 'violates', but I prefer the other spelling).
Harnish considers Grice's example:
(1) Geary is meeting a woman this evening.
implicates "the woman is not his sister, mother, wife, or close platonic
friend" (Grice WOW).
Harnish notes:
"But does
(2) Geary is meeting an adult human female this evening
carry the _same_ implicature? It seems not, and this creates the following
difficulty, emphasised by Chomsky in conversation. Grice wants to say that any
_way_ or _manner_ of saying the same thing i slikely to have the same
generalized implicature. So if the above does not (in all likelihood) have the
requisite implicature it should not count as another way or manner of saying
(the
same thing as) the original."
"And this would be the case if either:
(a) these two expressions ['bitch' and 'female dog'] did not count as
'saying the same thing' when uttered in the appropriate context [And Geary
allows
for context sensitivity], or
(b) these were not different 'ways' or 'manners' of saying the same thing.
"There is reason to deny both (i) and (ii)."
"First, recall that 'what is said' was in part a function of (or at least
'closely related to') the conventional meaning of the words uttered (WOW,
p.30),
and presumably the two expressions in question are paraphrases. So, other
things being equal, one would expect the same thing to have been said."
"Second, under the maxim of Manner, relating _how_ what is said is to be
said) we find, 'be brief'. [And clearly 'bitch' is briefer than 'female dog'].
So clearly we could generate an implicature off of the exapnded paraphrase."
"For instance, A says,
'I'm going to meet Bobby'
B says, 'Is Bobby a man or a woman?'
A says,
(3) Well, Bobby's an adult human female.
"I would think that A implied something like the opinion that s/he did not
view Bobby as particularly sexually attractive or desirable in a feminine
('womanish') way, and he did this by conspicuously picking the verbose
equivalent
thereby (conspicuously) avoiding the lexeme 'woman' [or 'bitch'] and so
disavowing some of its usual suggestions in these contexts." "That it has
these
suggestions cannot be doubted in view of pairs like, "She is a really (good,
etc.) woman' vs. 'She is a real (good, etc.) adult human female'."
Etc.
JL
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