My first post here. I am a writer of fiction, I enjoy the work of JLS.
Here is a link to a German artist reading out a paragraph I gave him for the purpose (the last two minutes or so).
http://www.bookarmor.com/cupboard.m4a
Thank you.
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Loved it!
ReplyDeleteI do love the word "cubboard" which has especial connotations for the Austinians among nous. Since J. L. Austin, originally of Lancaster, noted:
There are biscuits in the cubboard,
if you are hungry.
Yale professor Keith De Rose called these "cupboard-conditionals". They are not strictly philonian:
And there are also biscuits
in the cupboard even if you are
NOT Hungry
making the hunger-reference otiose to say the least.
It does strike the Gricean in me that Austin´s cupboard conditionals don´t travel (and trouble) to the USA.
ReplyDeleteFor they have "cookies" and I forget their word for "cubboard".
In a way a cupboard, while thus named, was first encountered to me as the place of a bone of discontent.
For I often cried, in sorrow, when I tried to imagine that loyal hound of that irresponsible woman, Mrs Hubbard.
She went to the cuboard
to get her nice dog a bone.
Then the nursery exploits it (or explodes) when you have "bone" to rhyme with "none". As if the dog would care.
"humble cupboard"
ReplyDelete"Buckingham Cupboard"
--- Indeed.
What it strikes the "blend", for Jason is right in calling this a blend, alla Turner,
is not just the diachronic semanticity of the pragmatic impliature, but the SOUND to it as well.
It´s never the "p" in CubBoard.
The blend is more than metaphtonymic: it´s what Austin would call plain "phemic".
Cfr.
There is a BLACK bird in the backyard
There is a Black BIRD in the backyard.
There is a BLACKbird in the backyard.
Similarly
Mother Hubbard went to the cub-bard.
etc.
In terms of Carnap´s semantic intensionalism, by a meaning postulate, we get.
ReplyDeleteLet x be a cup
and y a board
(x) Cx --> Bx
i.e. a cuboard boards cups.
(cfr. his "Pirots karulise elatically").
The fact that we go _beyond_ the meaning postulate can only be proved _externally_ by travelling -- for travel narrows the mind.
Similarly, "surely, ´"all bachelors are unmarried" is not to be understood merely as an English truth. Quelle impertinence, we hear the French say. It´s a truth of our conceptual scheme."
The fact that in Italian, the "cubboard" makes no reference to either the board or the cup should have confused ... Dante?
"At Buckingham Cupboard, She dwells, glorious, among the (her) cups (and saucers)."
ReplyDeleteFor it was a saucerboard.
"The Buckingham Cupboard", "the Magnificent Royal cupboard".
ReplyDelete-- and rumour has it she has a humbler one at Windsor.
"We have a cupboard at home", says an American. "Several", interrupts the wife. "Darling, those are CLOSET space".
ReplyDeleteExactly, here they seem to be breaching a shared conceptual scheme (what Lakatos calls "incommensurability" -- of the cupboard) that cries for a Gricean analyis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions:
x is a cupboard iff
x is not JUST closet space.
And the trick is to "define" ´cupboard´ without not just mentioning board and cup.
Where would Grice´s analysis will _stop_?
As Jason notes,
ReplyDelete"The Persian civilisation has not yet produced the cupboard".
-- it has not yet produced Grice, either. So what gives?
But seriously, surely the Persians enjoy a nice cuppa cha. And where do they KEEP the cups?
The Chinamen are also ignorant of the cupboard: they safe-keep their crockery up in jasmine trees _each night_.
ReplyDeleteOkay. Some serious history then. Who gave Mother Hubbard the idea?
I think that your observation about Buckingham Cupboard and its 'p' sound is worth me making a further comment, and that is to say, that I believe that it this linguistic connection is what drew them towards one another, and that permitting my mind to cast around for 'the next move' is how composition proceeds, with the fused sound of the phrase producing a "Yes!" moment, "Value added."
ReplyDeleteI say this as I had no thought to include the Queen, or Buckingham Palace in this quickly written paragraph, I was only supplied with the words 'British Cupboard Revolutions' and asked to work from that.
For me, being open to these sorts of possibilities is a pleasure, what it's all about.
JLS' observations though, they do worry me, in their (a)cuteness. I was kept awake last night by the awful thought that - "Most art is poor science..." and of the devastating implications of that, for me and my stumblings. "But you stumble in such an interesting way..." Laughter from the wings.
No worry, be happy!
ReplyDeleteYour passage that you had that German artist read is a _gem_!
And I'm intrigued by ... the universe and by the caption to the link you gave, "exiled". Surely we all are?!
--- I think your cupboard piece runs so well and smooth!
In fact, Austin never used "cupboard": he uses 'sideboard'. The Irish particulary, the wiki entry reads, don't use "cupboard" but "press". This strikes me as "wiki" imperialism. These are anonymous entries, the wiki ones: and surely someone In Ireland does use "cupboard"! (or similarly, someone in England does use "press", as in hot press, etc.)
The German artist: I saw his "cupboard revolution" but it escapes me -- because I see no cup!
Your speech, o. t. o. h., it's all about it. The value added, indeed.
One thing to consider, too: I do love a cupboard (having read the Wiki entry) in its original format: I don't think it was originally too humble. It was a practical piece of wood (a board) where you put your cups on. It may have had two tiers or more (but I would call this a cupboardS, though). It was THE way to keep a cup, etc. A mugboard, as it were.
Apparenty William and Mary loved them, and THEY are the ones to blame for having turned them onto things with doors, etc. The wiki entry says that Mary's original cupboard was so heavy it couldn't lie on its little limbs or legs.
--- Your metonymy is excellent: you consider the Buckingham Cupboard and elaborate on the 'inverted snobbery'. As an exiled, I see a lot of that: But having seen Queen Beatrix's cupboard in The Hague, give me Queen Elizabeth's any day!
--- As a lover of furniture, the wiki entry is pretty god. I do like my furniture to have a use to them. And to put your cups and things seems like the best use for a board you can give to that board.
Etc.
Your blending the 'revolution' with the 'cupboard' was extremely "on spot" as they say, and the German artist made the best of it, or the most of it, when he read it for the radio.
I like your "science and art" thing too. Drop it in a post for this blog, too. Since these comments are buried into buryings, and that may need a fresher account, etc.
Regards.