Thanks to L. Helm for his remarks. I will concentrate on a few points in this
post: the use of ‘tame’ (and Saint-Exupery, 'apprivoiser'), the use of
‘terrier’, the use of ‘pet’, and the mis-use of Grice! Re: ‘tame’. How exact
is Saint-Exupery about the analysis of ‘taming’? Helm provides an excellent
reference (http://sciencing.com/tame-fox-8695097.html) relating the taming of
foxes. But then Perhaps Saint-Exupery would not be too happy with rendering his
‘apprivoiser’ as ‘tame’. After all, the fox has uttered, alla Grice:
i. Je ne puis pas jouer avec toi. Je ne suis pas apprivoisé.
Roughly:
ii. I can not play with thee. I am not socialised.
Thus, the ‘apprivoiser’ is a complex thing, and one wonders why the French had
to be so different from the Italians (who have ‘addomesticare’ and
‘ammansire’), or better still, than the old Romans with their excellent
‘cicurare’.
‘Apprivoiser,’ rather, derives from ‘privé’ (cfr. ‘privauté’).
But the sense is hardly simple. Literally, it means to turn an animal less wild
(‘Le petit prince a apprivoisé le renard’). But also to turn a wild animal into
a ‘privé’ animal, as one reads in Charles & Édouard Morren, Journal de
l'agriculture pratique, du Royaume de Belgique, Bruxelles &Liège, 1857, vol.9,
p.4: "Le coq de Sonnerat est plein de courage et de résolution; aussi est-il
très estimé dans l’Indoustan comme oiseau de combat. Les vrais amateurs indiens
ne se servent pas de coqs élevés à l'état domestique, mais bien de sujets
sauvages, que du reste ils apprivoisent en assez peu de temps."
As far as the implicatures of 'apprivoiser' are concerned, it can mean to turn
anyone ‘plus doux, plus traitable.’ (‘apprivoiser un sauvage.’ ‘C’était un
homme peu sociable, on a eu bien de la peine à l’apprivoiser.’ ‘La fille
demeura. Tout doucement il vous l’apprivoisa ; Lui prit d’abord son joli bras
d’ivoire; Puis s’approcha, puis en vint au baiser' -- Jean de La Fontaine,
L’Ermite, œuvres complètes, p. 177).
'Apprivoiser' can also be used, of an animal, to become less wild. (‘Les loups
s’apprivoisent facilement.’ -- contra Helm's reference about the foxes above).
Or become more docile, ‘plus doux, plus sociable, s’accoutumer, s’habituer
(personne)’ (‘Cet enfant était bien farouche, il s’est apprivoisé peu à peu à
notre contact.’). Also : (Vieilli) ‘s’accoutumer à la vue du danger, à
l’exemple du vice’ (‘S’apprivoiser avec le danger, avec le vice.’ ‘C’est donc
ainsi qu’insensiblement on avance vers le précipice ; on s’apprivoise avec le
danger, on commence à n’en avoir plus tant de peur.’ Réflexions d’un Évêque de
Languedoc sur quelques nouveaux Arrêts du Parlement de Toulouse », circa 1753,
p. 66).
The complex derivatives include apprivoiser and réapprivoiser. Lexicon
related, within French itself, granted, includes ‘domestiquer’ (cognate of
course with the Italian "addomesticare") and ‘dresser’. For the records, some
translations for the SENSE of 'apprivoiser' include German zähmen, English
tame, Catalan : domar, amansar, amansir, Chinese : 馴服, Spanish : domar,
amansar, Esperanto: malsovaĝigi, Finnish : kesyttää, Hungarian : megszelídít,
Ido : amansar, Italian : addomesticare, ammansire, Latin : cicurare, Dutch :
temmen, Portuguese : domar, Russian : приручить, Same du Nord : dápmat. For the
implicatures of "faire d’un animal sauvage un animal privé", there's English :
domesticate, Dutch : temmen, domesticeren. And for the implicature "rendre
quelqu’un plus doux, plus traitable", we have English : socialize
(États-Unis)/(Royaume Uni) ou socialise (Royaume-Uni). Top of
Form(Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, huitième édition, (apprivoiser),
mais l’article a pu être modifié depuis.
Helm: “But, if anyone were interested in the point, and in case you were
drawing a parallel between Ritchie's Hamish and Saint-Exupery's fox he might be
aware that no one any longer speaks of taming dogs.”Good. Grice would find this
a case of archaic linguistic botanising, i.e. the days when people (or ‘folk,’
as he would say) DID speak of ‘taming’ dogs – domestic or familiar dog versus
feral dog, say.
Helm: “In fact it seems widely accepted (in my nonscientific assessment) by
scholars and scientists to assume that dog and man evolved symbiotically.
Mitochondrial DNA studies and results show that dog and man began at roughly
the same time. To find out what the true relationship was between the first
men and the first dogs is of course impossible, but that doesn’t bar scientists
and others from speculating.”
Well, the fox is somewhat ambiguous. The Little Prince seems to misunderstand
the fox’s explanation of what ‘taming’ amounts to when he (the little prince)
says that his rose has tamed him.
Helm: “A perhaps common conjecture is that civilization as we know it would
not have been possible without the dog. Just guarding the flocks was of
monumental benefit to herders.”
And the fox in “The Little Prince” makes a good point about Man’s chickens!
Helm: “They wouldn’t have had the manpower or ability to raise large herds
without dogs.” I’m less sure about chickens, which are of course the fox’s
obsession.
Helm: “Rhodesian Ridgebacks are not being any longer bred to hunt lions.
Rhodesians it has been discovered (or bred for this) today make excellent
pets.” I think it’s ‘pet’ that Saint-Exupery is thinking about, incidentally.
“Tame me so you can play with me.” “To tame is to establish ties.” The fox is
wanting the little prince to make him (the fox) his pet. Literally, of course,
‘pet’ is a very English concept (“to pet”) and I’m not sure Saint-Exupery would
make a point about the petting. But he does make a point about how the process
of taming would go, by getting closer to the fox day by day, until, perhaps the
little prince can pet him. But are things so Griceianly easy? Course not!
"Pet," meaning, "tamed animal" is a Scots and northern English dialect (and
exclusively so until mid-18c.), of unknown origin!
And this is NOT Popper speaking (vide his "Objective Knowledge"). In the usage
of "indulged child" (c. 1500) is recorded slightly earlier, oddly, than that of
"animal kept as a favourite" (1530s). But the latter may still be the primary
meaning. That's why Grice would always say, "I care a hoot what the dictionary
says" (the implicature: if you, as a lexicologist, go by records, you don't get
to the _logic_ of the sense and implicatures involved). While the origin is
unknown (till now), it is probably associated with or influenced by "petty." As
a term of endearment "pet" is registered by 1849. "Teacher's pet" is attested
from 1890. “Pet-shop" is attested from 1928.
We have here a case of a reverse implicature. A pet is not called a pet because
he is petted, but the other way round: to pet (used as from the 1620s) is to
treat x as a pet. The usage of "to stroke" is first found 1818. Slang sense of
"kiss and caress" is from 1920 (implicated in petting). Related: Petted.
Helm: “Thus, we may suspect, while the Rhodesian at the time was an able
hunter, back around the camp fire he was also excellent at guarding the camp
and keeping the hunters company. Back before that, before his hunting days,
the ancestors of the Rhodesian guarded farms and held their own against
predators of various sorts,” Predator would be a good word to describe the fox
as seen from Homo sapiens 's perspective – predator to Homo sapiens’s chickens,
that is.
Helm: “but for eons before that (and since as I can attest) he has been a
great companion -- protective enough, but not needing to do the whole job.
Some breeds like the Mastiff could do the whole job. But if the hunting dog
slow down the predator or intruder long enough for the hunter to get to his
spear (or gun) then he had done his job. Symbiosis doesn’t need to involve
equality. A parasite needing a particular host to survive would be considered
symbiotic. I once read an article or review by someone arguing that the dog
was a parasite because man did everything for him and he did not benefit man in
any way. The book I’m sure intended to be humorous. In fact man has benefited
enormously from the dog.”
Well, in the little prince/fox episode, the issue of equality seems to be
relevant. The fox says that to tame is to ‘establish ties’ -- "créer des
liens". But it seems it’s up to the little prince to establish ties. While the
phrase, ‘establish ties’ may sound as implicating (as per implicature) some
sort of equality, this does not seem to be what the fox is having in (his)
mind, since the fox is asking *the little prince* (cfr. Shakespeare, "The
taming of the shrew" and its sequel, "The tamer tamed") to start establishing
ties. The implicature seems to be that the fox cannot do this: start
establishing ties. The fact that the little prince gets confused and starts
thinking that the rose has domesticated him may not help -- or then it of
course may!
Helm quotes: “In living primates, the brain’s visual system corresponds to the
size of the eye socket. Calculating brain size in fossil humans with this
information, the remaining brain area in Neanderthals was about 15% smaller
than in fossil modern humans. According to the researchers, this difference may
relate to greater social complexity in Homo sapiens – potentially an important
distinction between the two species, who co-existed 200,000 to 30,000 years
ago.” [from
http://humanorigins.si.edu/research/whats-hot-human-origins/neanderthals-larger-eyes-and-smaller-brains
]Note the speculation “this difference may relate to greater social complexity
in Homo sapiens.”
Well, this has a Griceian echo to it (To me, of course, everything has a
Griceian echo to it). He was obsessed with the word ‘see’, and in fact, once
discussed with his philosophical colleague G. J. Warnock that while it’s not
otiose to say, “We heard the sound of an explosion,” “We saw the visum of three
cows” sounds stupid. Grice was a bit of a Neanderthal at heart, because he saw
that 'see' is 'causal': "We see apples; not sense data of apples. Apples
nourish us, sense data of apples don't.")
Helm: “There was an implication that [Ritchie] was experimenting and wished to
increase Hamish’s vocabulary as large as possible. As it happens I have been
doing something similar with all my dogs on hikes. I would say “we’re going
this way,” and point. I admit that I wasn't striving to teach my dogs words,
just wishing to avoid our becoming separated.”
This sounds complexly Wittgensteinian. For Witters, as Grice called
Wittgenstein (he found “Wittgenstein” difficult to pronounce, especially in the
Austrian dialect, “vitgenshstine”) meaning is use, so
iii. We are going this way.
and having the obedient dog "obey" means that the utterance (i) has been
de-composed (alla Frege) by the dog, syntactically, into:
iv. We + are-going + [deictic] THIS – ‘way’.
A way is like a road, only different -- as Ritchie might grant.
Oddly, the fox is emphatic that taming does not need lingo: "Je te regarderai
du coin de l'œil et tu ne diras rien. Le langage est source de malentendus." I
wish Witters had read Saint-Exupery!
Helm then refers to his Irish terrier: “She has made friends with Trolls!”
Well, etymologically, ‘terrier’ is cognate with Latin “terra”, so perhaps the
trolling bit is redundant rather than essential. I expect it’s this
soil-dependence that makes a terrier a terrier. Terrier, kind of dog, early
15c., from Old French chien terrier "terrier dog," literally "earth dog," from
Medieval Latin terrarius "of earth," from Latin terra "earth" (see terrain). So
called because the dogs pursue their quarry (foxes, badgers, etc.) into their
burrows.
And then a grice was a pig, extinct!
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCES
Grice, H. P. The Paul Carus Lectures on the conception of value. Oxford:
Clarendon. Edited by Judith Butler, with an introduction by Judith Butler (on
the sheepdog, etc.).
