Or, the Roman pedestrian
How pedestrial can Grice be?
In "Re: Hereabouts," McEvoy quotes:
"Arsenal this week had periods of sublime play; today they were pedestrian."
and adds:
"And lucky."
The impliciture (I tho't McEvoy would like that -- it's Kent Bach's way of
spelling "implicAture," which he finds "_boring_" (emphasis Bach's)) being
i. McEvoy thinks football is pedestrian.
or rather, more specifically, -- "be as specific as you need to," being a
Griceian maxim) that Arsenal this week was. In fact, it may be argued that, via
way of conceptual analysis, it can be argued that
ii. All football is pedestrian.
As Grice and indeed Geary note, 'football' is short for 'football game'. For a
ball is _not_ pedestrian. Now, what does 'pedestrian' first applies to? Grice
asks ("Do not multiply senses beyond necessity") this every time ("Once we
identify the original _etymon_ of a lexical item, we can play with its
implicatures").
Geary makes a distinction between (ii) and
iii. Handball is not pedestrian.
But surely (iii) is refutable, in that the feet ARE also used. In fact, Grice
distinguishes between what he calls "soccer" (he was the soccer captain at 'The
House', Corpus Christi, back in the day -- plus editor of the undergraduate
philosophical journal, "The Pelican") and 'American football' and 'Rubgy
football'. He would reminisce,
"It is very ironic that at Clifton, I played Rugby football."
On the other hand Cicero didn't.
Latin pedester (genitive pedestris) "plain, not versified, prosaic," literally
"on foot" (sense contrasted with equester "on horseback"), from pedes "one who
goes on foot," from pes (genitive pedis) "foot," from PIE root *ped- (1) "a
foot" (see foot (n.)). Meaning "going on foot" is first attested 1791 in
English (it also was a sense of Latin pedester). The earlier adjective in
English was pedestrial.
Kripke was fascinated by Arsenal's 'designational rigidity' (and would be
delighted by Ritchie's pun on the analytic claim that "Arsenal is pedestrian").
In "Naming and Necessity," Kripke mentions Arsenal -- and Socrates.
Kripke says:
"Sentences like 'Socrates is called "Socrates"' [implicating 'Football is
pedestrian'] are very interesting and one can spend, strange as it may seem,
hours talking about their analysis. I actually did, once, do that. I won't do
that, however, on this occasion. (See how high the seas of language can rise.
And at the lowest points too.)"
Football, pedestrian? Literally?
The English call their national sport ('football') from the Latin pedester
(genitive pedestris) "plain, not versified, prosaic". Literally, of course,
Cicero used it to mean "on foot" (its sense contrasted with "equester" "on
horseback", which was how the Romans called polo), from pedes "one who goes on
foot," from "pes" (genitive pedis) "foot," from PIE root *ped- (1) "a foot"
(see foot (n.)). Meaning "going on foot" is first attested 1791 in English (it
also was a usage of Latin "pedester" -- for surely you cannot play 'football'
on a horse, unless you are implicating the horse's four feet). The earlier
adjective in English, incidentally, was pedestrial -- as used by Shakespeare in
"The Scottish play," but mainstream English prefers Chaucer's spelling.
Why does something as pedestrian as football would interest a philosopher like
Kripke (pronounced /kripke/).
Well, as Kripke notes in "Naming and Necessity", "It is an attested fact that
on 1 December 1886, munitions workers in Woolwich, South East London, formed
Arsenal as Dial Square, with David Danskin as their first captain. Named after
the heart of the Royal Arsenal complex, the workers (under, I hope, the
implicature by Danskin) took the name of the *whole complex* only month later."
"I have found in Danskin's Journal the Griceian reason: "It would be otiose for
a football team to be named by "two words", such as "Dial Square" are -- I
hereby declare that "Arsenal" is, shall I say, less pedestrial of a rigid
designation."
And stuff.
Cheers,
Speranza
pĕdester, tris, tre
I masc. pedestris, Nep. Eum. 4, 3; Vop. Prob. 21, 1), adj. id., on foot, that
goes, is done, etc., on foot, pedestrian.
I Lit.: gratior illi videtur statua pedestris futura, quam equestris, Cic.
Phil. 9, 6: equestres et pedestres copiae, foot-soldiers, infantry, id. Fin. 2,
34, 112: copiae, Caes. B. G. 2, 17 al.; Tac. H. 2, 11 fin.; so, pedester
exercitus, Nep. Eum. 4, 3: pedestre scutum, of a foot-soldier, Liv. 7, 10:
pugna, id. 22, 47: proelium duplex equestre ac pedestre commisit, Suet. Dom. 4:
pedestris acies, Tac. A. 2, 17.— 2 In plur. subst. pedestres,
foot-soldiers, Just. 11, 9; people on foot, Vulg. Matt. 14, 13; id. Marc. 6,
33.— 3 Pedestria auspicia nominabantur, quae dabantur a vulpe, lupo, equo,
ceterisque animalibus quadrupedibus, Paul. ex Fest. p. 244 Müll.—
B Transf., on land, by land: pedestres navalesque pugnae, Cic. Sen. 5:
pedestria itinera, the roads by land, Caes. B. G. 3, 9; cf. id. B. C. 2, 32:
proelia pedestria, Just. 4, 4, 4: transitus, Plin. 3, 11, 16, § 101; Mart.
Spect. 28. —
II Trop., of style, like the Gr. πεζός, not rising above the ground, not
elevated.
A Written in prose, prose (Gr. idiom; Lat. prosa oratio): Plato multum supra
prosam orationem et quam pedestrem Graeci vocant, surgit, Quint. 10, 1, 81:
pedestres historiae, Hor. C. 2, 12, 9.—
B Plain, common, without poetic flights, without pathos, prosaic: dolet
sermone pedestri Telephus, Hor. A. P. 95: quid prius inlustrem satiris musāque
pedestri, id. S. 2, 6, 17 (for which: sermones Repentes per humum, id. Ep. 2,
1, 251): opus, Aus. Ep. 16, 78: fabulae, Ter. Maur. p. 2433 P.
