[lit-ideas] The It Boy
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:59:38 EDT
Geary wrote in a poem,
"a rose by any other smell"
and the old story, or words to that effect (don't you hate that
expression, 'words to that effect' -- it seems an oxymoron, alla
pragmatic-ambiguity
recognised by J. R. Searle -- for surely if synonymy is a chimaera, so is
'words to that effect' -- also the effect is hardly specified).
Anyway, he later noted,
>roses don't smell
[they lack 'olfactory nerves', he adds] and retells us a charming story
when he actually _tasted_ them ('not really sweet from what I recall').
Anyway, the 'it', in:
"it smells as if somebody farted here"
is _otiose_ grammatically, and as every speaker of Latin knows, hardly
existed in Caesar's time (perhaps the 'gallicism' can be attributed to Nero,
though).
The 'it' appears everywhere, not just in 'verba sentienda' (as the Latins
called them), but consider,
"FURRINERS NOT ALLOWED"
-- "It says hear, _clearly_, "furriners not allowed"".
I claim that _that_ use of 'it', is also confusing and Grice could have
spent some time in it (cfr. the Saying/Implying section in WOW, vi):
For, _who_ says it? _It_ cannot possibly be the subject of 'saying'. It
lacks, to use Geary's idiom in a different context, the proper 'dictatorial'
veins or nerves.
Cheers,
JLS
Somewhere Over The Rainbow *
*Liza Minnelli is saying that Anne Hattaway should _not_ 'portray my mother
as a drug-addict, but more as an entertainer'.
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