[lit-ideas] Qua Si Quid
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:03:42 -0400
Competent Adult Language User: 'Why is that called a cup?' ?
Child: 'Because it's a cup.'?
----
I hope the implicature is not that child is incompetent. In some ways, children
(or 'kids', as they call them in Tennessee) are like _peasants_ (as they call
them in Philadelphia).
Huxley has the memorable quote, "Rightly them's called 'pigs'".
One problem with the Latino-philosophical variant, 'koine', qua si que is that
if the que is an enclitic, would be read by McCreery as 'and' (tuquoque Brute),
i.e. as 'qua sique' -- roughly, "and then -- what?", or as I prefer, "qua
sivel" "_or_ then _what_? (+> "Are you threatening me _or what_ (quidvel).
While a cup is called a cup because it is a cup, a quack-quack is calls a
quackquack not so much because it? _is_ a duck, but because, to use Eve
Kotowski Sedgewick's parlance, it _performs_ 'duck'.
JL
Other related posts:
