In a message dated 12/7/2015 1:06:39 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx writes:
"[M]y mind decided to tackle the problem of what Scottish chickens might
be named if I owned some. People in Glasgow call women, “hen.” “It’s
down the road a wee way; you’ll find it on the left, hen.” Maybe they’d call
hens, “hen” too?"
I think that you would then have a reverse implicature. The Glasgweian idea
seems to be that the use of 'hen' to refer "HUMAN ♀" may be considered a
metaphor, figure of speech or thought, or implicature (Grice's example,
"You're the cream in my coffee". By calling a hen a hen, you'd be close to
Huxley's tautological statements that "pigs are rightly called pigs," or
something (or as Grice prefered, "Rightly are grices called grices" -- a grice
is
an extinct Scottish pig).
Then 'cock' is British for rooster, but surely in cock robin, it 'cock'
just means ♂.
Linnaeus was the first to use ♀ and ♂ in his taxonomies, when he noted
what he called 'sexual dimorphism' (that Lodge calls 'gender dimorphism). It
is only natural that other biologists (and common folk) followed the
practice of having different NAMES or labels for ♀ and ♂ specimens of the same
species.
While the origin of ♀ and ♂ are disputed, and some claim it's not
Graeco-Roman, one etymythology about them is that the former represents
Venere's
(or Venus's if you mustn't) hand mirror, while the latter represents Marte's
(or Mars's if you mustn't) shield and arrow. Linnaeus was unware of the
attending implicatures, perhaps?
Cheers,
Speranza
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