-----------by J. L. Speranza, for the Grice Club
--- I was commenting on "Grace Kelly". Kramer instructs that Kelly features large as a toponym in Philadelphia. There's also a suburb called "King of Prussia".
--
Most toponyms have a history to them.
When I was in St. Petersburg in Florida, I found that the name was indeed named after St. Petersburg in Russia. I was _not_ surprised.
---
The problem, Gricean, with toponyms is "The South of France".
This should best be abbreviated as "The-South-of-France": it's an opaque thing: to think of it literally as "the" + "south" + "of" + "France" can confuse you.
Grice's example (WoW:ii)
Where does C live?
Somewhere in the South of France.
--- I fail to remember if he used the capital for "S" but since there were some typos in the transcript, and this is _spoken_ who cares? (I do, actually).
i. Somewhere in the south of France.
ii. Somewhere in the South of France.
In a way, 'somewhere' is redundant, as in "Whereas my mother is German, the fridge is empty". Surely no ref. to 'where' is meant.
Thus, what is meant is
iii. In the south of France.
iv. In the South of France.
I find that to be exactly exacting. Surely you've seen Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn in "Two for the Road" where they drive in the south of France. Everything is pretty much good driving distance (if you own a convertible, of course -- don't trouble otherwise).
So
I cannot see how it fails to be informative.
The implicature, Grice notes, is that the utterance cannot, properly (but improperly yes) be utterered _in_ the south of France, for v would thus be felt to be more appropriate:
v. -- Here.
Of course, 'here' is ambiguous, but not of course 'polysemous' (Grice's bete noire).
--
When Maughan used it, here meant "Maurizio", his villa. When Brigitte Bardot uses it, it means, on the other hand, "Saint Tropez".
So one has to be careful.
When George Harrison disrupted from the Beetles, he edited a long-playing record which I bought because I found the title charming -- I am a discloseted anglophile --. It's called,
"Somewhere in England"
and he don't _mean_ Liverpool!
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For the record, and because my point seems simplistically silly unless I go _on_ record, here is Grice. MOST of his examples have been refuted, so that's NOT what I'm trying to do. The worst is M. Dascal:
ReplyDeleteSmith doesn't seem to have a girlfriend these days.
-- But he's paying a lot of visits to New York lately
(Dascal: He goes to the whores, there -- "Conversational relevance")
-- the example is Grice's -- the implicature ain't. Grice suggests: "he may have a girlfriend in New York, for what or all if you must, I care").
---
For
"Somewhere in the South of France"
he suggests the utterer DOESN'T KNOW where. Since this is detached and cancelled, everytime we do know, but don't care to display, etc.
I should type the real thing, which should be in google.books anywhere. Try "Somewhere in the South of France", etc.
He cares to provide a full scenario, where A and B are driving through one knows where, or planning one, and are thinking of visiting "C" provided doing that will not be much of a 'way-out' as it were.
Etc.