McEvoy: “K both avidly absorbed this six seconds of mindless vandalism and
conspicuously failed to utter any “Uh oh” or “Oh dear”. Instead, on the fifth
watching, K emitted a hiccupy noise, known to researchers on infancy as the
“pleasure hiccup-shriek”, that normally indicates a moderate-to-high level of
approval or glee.”
We may need a phonetic transcription of the hiccupy noise. “Hiccupy” is
onomatopoetic in nature, but still… I would add it to the non-regular items of
K’s repertoire.
McEvoy: “The researcher was thrown into confusion by this, and began viewing
“Stick Man” for its subversive content, losing track of whether it was any use
as a measure of linguistic anything.”
Perhaps Julia has read too much of Davidson (vide Davidson, “A nice derangement
of epitaphs”).
McEvoy: “Subject ‘K’ and current orthodoxy on language-development. Current
thinking on earliest language-development centres on the
‘noise-pitch-ratio-command-and-control model’ [‘NPRCCM’]. This model was first
advanced by Shatner, the child psychologist and speech therapist, to fend off
over-anxious parents concerned their child was not saying much by the age of
one, when they had ‘friends’ boasting their child was asking “More toast
please, but less butter” by the same age.”
Note that the implicatures of “Less butter but more toast” are different.
Grunebaum refers to these as ‘conventional’ implicatures, and his sexist
example is the Great War ditty, “She was poor BUT she was honest.” Cfr. “Less
butter AND more toast.”
McEvoy: “According to NPRCCM, a child may not need to develop words, or even
coherent syllables, because [the child is] perfectly able to command and
control grown-ups using just a series of noises or sounds or squeaks or
screeches. Within this model, subtleties of meaning are mostly conveyed by
adroit fluctuations of pitch.”
Grunebaum would heartedly agree. Vide the section on “Implicatures of speech,”
The Harvard lectures on implicature.
McEvoy: “In Shatner-Nimoy’s theorem, as yet unproved, the ratio, between the
scope of these ‘noise-emissions’ and their effectiveness as ‘commands and
controls’, corresponds, inversely and squarely, to the ratio between numbers of
different words heard by the child and numbers of words the child is bothered
to use. In layman’s terms, the theorem predicts that infants only utter more
than noise when they cannot perfectly well communicate their desires, needs,
aims and dissatisfactions otherwise.”
Grunebaum (who otherwise follows Dr. Spock) blames the parents on this:
“Parents are the least appropriate people to be allowed to have children.”
Grunebaum’s implicature being: “if they cannot infer what their own infants
imply.” He means ‘implicate.’ K’s mother might disagree, analytically.
McEvoy: “Given their communication needs are quite limited (for example, it is
still generally accepted that they will not need to discuss exactly what
Wittgenstein means in paras 146-255 of Philosophical Investigations before the
age of four),”
This can be read ‘transparently,’ or opaquely. Opaquely, they may not. But
transparently, they may. “Transparently” means “in other words,” as in the
song, “Fly me to the moon” (originally called “In other words” – but the
cabaret owner did not find it catchy enough).
McEvoy: “the theorem therefore predicts that the child will give desultory
consideration to the mass of intricate words directed its way by zealous,
over-enunciating adults – because, frankly, the effort would be a waste of
precious time better spent mewling and scrambling around for more objects to
throw.”
Grunebaum refers to this as the P. E. R. E., the principle of economy of
rational effort, and a sensible principle it is, too.
McEvoy: “As is now well-known, the NPRCC model recently became embroiled in
public controversy, after Shatner, in collaboration with DeForest Kelley,
extended it to ‘horrible bosses’, and horrible people generally. But, unlike
them, the infant does not have a ready-made language that it could easily use
(– yet, because of personality defects or a need to abuse positions of smallish
authority, discards for grunts and mumbles). So we may set aside recent
disputes, especially as to whether the ‘Shatner-Doohan-Takei-Roddenberry
hypothesis’ over-extends the model’s application, when applying NPRCCM to K.”
Oddly, recently Baldwin played an infant in a film which included the word
“Boss”. Vide references.
McEvoy: “Contrary to criticisms that NPRCCM provides a flimsy
pseudo-intellectual pretext for the inexcusable behaviour of horrible grown-ups
and perhaps even Donald Trump, it may be that NPRCCM can be validly extended,
in the case of infants, from their language development to behavioural
development.”
Well, Grunebaum would NOT make this distinction since ‘language development’ is
a form of ‘behavioural development’. Vide Grunebaum’s favourite author: Skinner.
McEvoy: “For example, a child’s steadfast refusal to walk upright despite a
crowd of adults baying encouragement, may be explained in similar ‘Why bother?’
fashion. The underlying question can be variously framed e.g. why stumble on
two legs like a wobbly inelegant drunk, who will fall over soon anyway, when
you can dart forever like a panther on four legs? Here actions prove more
powerful than words, as K demonstrates – K holds a pop-up book in one hand, and
motions forward like Daniel Day Lewis in “My Left Foot”, using rear legs for
paddling and his free hand both for extra propulsion and to signal which adult
he wants to place him on their lap.”
While ‘actions speak louder than words’ (or McEvoy’s paraphrase, “actions are
more powerful than words”) is usually, metaphorically a red herring. J. L.
Austin’s favourite English proverb was: “A man of words, and not of deeds, is
like a garden full of weeds”. He inscribed it in his copy of “Words and Deeds”
which became his “How to do things with words – and fail in the attempt,” the
Harvard lectures posthumously published by J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock.
McEvoy: “This analogy may work best for those who have mostly forgotten the
film.”
He has a new one now, apparently his last, “Fanthom thread,” totally based on
fiction!
McEvoy: “Strict pedants may insist that Day Lewis could not paddle with his
rear legs or use a free arm for extra propulsion, hence the title “My Left
Foot” for the only part of Christy Moore’s anatomy that he could control; also
Day Lewis, as Moore, never sought anyone’s lap to read a pop-up book. But the
point still holds].”
In “Fanthom Thread,” Day Lewis (or Lewis as Grunebaum called him (“What’s the
use of a double surname?” he once asked P. H. Nowell-Smith, KNOWING that
Nowell-Smith was using “Nowell” for [perlocutionary] effect, only) uses his
right HAND a lot, coincidentally.
McEvoy: “In conclusion and almost certainly:- much as a metal detectorist
improves their proximity to low-value coins by responding to wild fluctuations
of pitch, so K exerts iron-control to improve the proximate position of the
grown-up holding him, say at the window – a minor desired adjustment to the
grown-up’s position is effected by tiny persistent yelps,”
Again phonetic transcription helpful, as we may add this to K’s repertoire.
“rising incessantly in sharpness should the grown-up not respond correctly, and
prompting full-scale yelling if the grown-up fails to complete the desired
movement within a time-frame regarded as reasonable [which, for K, may be
micro-seconds, especially if K is trying to get a better view of horses, that
he knows can move off suddenly].”
Grunebaum distinguishes between ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’. This may apply
here. “The prize for those shoes” is ‘reasonable,’ Grunebaum says, ‘makes a lot
of sense’. “But ‘The prize of those shoes’ is rational’ sounds ridiculous.”
McEvoy: “Conclusion drawn from conclusion:- in this way, an infant like K
‘teaches’ the grown-up without needing anything more linguistically advanced
than what is deemed necessary by the NPRCC model. Research here turns parental
orthodoxy on its head:”
And proves Grunebaumian: he had the knack to turn every orthodoxy into ‘other
people’s heterodoxy.’
McEvoy: “as Shatner points out to parents who pay him generously to allay their
fears, it is the child who becomes ‘fluent’ in several phrases by the age of
one who should be a cause for concern – as this ‘fluency’ may mask an
underlying disability in communicating by ‘noise-emissions’ only. The true
pearly ‘king’ or ‘queen’ of the early communicators, Shatner maintains (mostly
to fee-paying parents for whom this view is manna), is the virtually telepathic
toddler who emits not a squeak, but instead makes clear their position on
everything with just a meaningful look.”
Magic carpet travel, Grunebaum calls this.
McEvoy: “Stop me if you’ve heard it before, but the story goes that Einstein
spoke no words through infancy”
He spoke no words when he wrote at a Princeton blackboard, “e = mc2,” beyond
infancy.
McEvoy: “and this made his parents increasingly anxious. Then one day at table,
Einstein, aged four, said “This soup is rather cold”. His parents were taken
aback. “Albert, why have you not said anything before?” “Well, up until now
everything has been fine.””
Strictly, he spoke in German, whose correlate for ‘rather’ is rather more
implicatural in nature. While McEvoy’s reports Einstein’s DAD
counter-implicature, Einstein’s MOM famously explicated: “What d’you mean,
‘rather’, Freddie darling?”
Cheers,
Speranza