Grice as mediator (Grice on 'yonder')

Grice felt sometimes guilty that he had

"one foot on each side of the camp".

He was referring to Lord Russell and Sir Peter (Strawson). For Sir Peter had contradicted Russell, and Russell had written "Mr Strawson (as he then was) on referring" in Mind.

He felt, Grice did, that he needed to _mediate_.

"Medial" is the key word. Gundel analyses, following Trudgill, the Latin idea:

femina lupa

-- that woman is a whore.

The Romans never used 'that' -- which they found rude. For that matter, they didn't use 'this' which they found just as rude. Or, and this confuses Grice, they didn't use "the" either.

In a feature that Grice calls "Tarzanism", The Romans go:

woman whore

-- which one?

Surely, Grice feels, we need to qualify the claim. "And English provides you with some excellent choices, perhaps not as excellent as Greek, but what can you do about it?"

In English, Grice notes, the trichotomic Greek system

DEF. INDEF.
PROXIMATE DISTAL

MEDIAL

was lost, in London.

In the provinces you still here,

there's gold in them yonder hills.

Where 'them yonder', which McEvoy, to annoy me, calls a solecism, is the perfect Gricean paraphrase for what is _meant_. Etc.