---- by J. L. S.
-------- for the GC.
WITH IAN DENGLER, JASON KENNEDY and LAWRENCE KRAMER, we are discussing the rathe torrential tenets by Chomksy at Pisa: "You guys", he was referring to the Italian audience, "don't seem to have the problem: you are pro-dop; but in English the weather 'it' has given us the headaches -- or my students, rather."
----
Chomsky considers:
"It never rains but it pours"
versus the clumsy, "It never rains but pours"
"It often, indeed always, pours after raining"
--- "With snow," Chomsky remarks, "it's even trickier because while still 'falling water from the sky', the fact that it is _solid_ has turned the morphosyntax explode with a trace of theta-ellipsis -- as we shall soon see."
"It's raining, it's pouring"
(as per nursery rhyme) sounds, "repetitive", on the face of it.
--- But why.
Is that the Oxford Comma? No, it's the semi-colon oxoniensis.
"It's raining and pouring"? Odd.
"It's raining, and it's pouring". Odd.
--- Is the 'it' cross-clausally non-referential.
Kramer writes, "At this point, we don't care".
By 'we' he means everybody (almost). Ah well.
It's raining; it's pouring.
The old man is snoring.
He went to bed and (then) bumped his head,
And he couldn't get up in the (next) morning.
-- copyrighted in 1944 by Freda Selicoff.
"A children's book of the same name, "It's raining; it's pouring", written by Kin Eagle and illustrated by Rob Gilbert, expands on this rhyme to show
what happens to the old man in all sorts of weather.
---" "What if the skies should fall".
"The rhyme is featured in the song "It's Raining," in the 1962 debut album by Peter, Paul, and Mary".
"The PC game Delaware St. John Volume 1: The Curse of Midnight Manor, begins with the ghost of a little girl singing this rhyme in a spooky manner while
it is storming -- outside."
----
"The weather in the streets." I submit, contra Jason Kennedy, that 'it' cannot be God (if I undestood his point about the theistic implicature of 'it'). It would strike me as a lesser god that only 'snows' outside. Surely if this were God God, it would be snowing simpliciter, or 'storming' simpliciter, if you must -- but snow seems to fly better here --, making the outside reference otiose under the circumstances?
"Jose Feliciano sang "It's raining; it's pouring", as part of his release, "Listen to the Falling Rain".
"This rhyme, "It's raining; it's pouring" is sung by children at the end of Supertramp's song, It's Raining Again."
-- where the implicature of 'again' is that God ceased to exist for a while?
--- cfr. Pennies from Heaven. "So when you hear it thunder, don't run under a tree".
"In the 1997 film Tower of Terror, a Shirley Temple-esque actress named Sally Shine, played by Lindsay Ridgeway, sings the song, "It's raining, it's pouring" in a creepy manner in an elevator."
Incidentally, it's #16814 in Roud Folk Song Index.
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It's raining men...
ReplyDeleteI don't agree either with Kramer's list of those who may care. What's with the declarations?
Writers deserve (be it an honour or a dishonour) to be explicitly added to a list that only features, what was it - 'linguists, philosophers and dilettantes'
Yes, I think he was being ironic. I would take that to expand, as per Kramer's utterance:
ReplyDelete"professional linguists, professional philosophers, and gentlemanly dilettantes" but I feel of course I'm the latter!
I'll consider the 'writer' later -- but let's even focus -- on: I will have to look up the etymology of 'dilettante' -- on the other two.
In fact, it may be just "linguists". Philosophers should, indeed, be concerned with larger, deeper, issues, like metaphysics, and metaethics. But I get Kramer's point.
I would think a 'logician' may also feel interested, if pressed. Just because Frege did not dwell to explicitly on the 'es' of 'es regnet', we don't to assume it's not a logical issue.
Ethicists I'm less sure. "It's right to defend your country", say. I would not be surprised if R. M. Hare, in his "Language of Morals" did not spend some time on the 'it' (cfr. ""It" is your duty"".
I add the 'professional' because the term, 'philosopher' or 'linguist', when unattached with 'professional' can mean almost anything -- i.e. a 'dilettante'. Is that word 'bad'?
E.g. -- Lady Macintosh, "Oh, Peter is a philosopher, you know. After fishing, hunting and shooting, he'll reclude in the library at Wytton and 'dialogue' with the Socrateses and the Platoses."
---
Cfr. "Oh, Richard," says Lady de Vere, "is quite a linguist. There's no way he can go fetch the groceries at the Village without bringing all sort of curiosa as to the way they speak down there."
--- So I would think that Peter and Richard are, respectively, philosopher and linguist. Only they are unwaged. But they'd rather be dead than seeing themselves waged -- with all the unwanted responsibilities that would entail -- and the time -- where would they find the time, to move to the Research center at the closest uni, to make public to the enrolled student, by obligation, almost, what they think?
But how do you extract the irony? JLS.
ReplyDeleteHow can you know...
Is there some sort of build-up from all of a person's previous utterances that you are aware of, so you're irony circuits fire and mine do not.
Or I have no irony circuits, or they are calibrated differently.
I will investigate.
No. I think it's good to work 'one-off'. The idea of a past, etc., can only be a red-herring at the time. Kramer knows that he is writing for someone who may JUST read his comment, and so he is NOT depending on his previous uses of 'dilettante' or some such:
ReplyDeleteI should have to revise his utterance, in the context in which it occurred. If I do, I may post a blog post about it, since this commentary-slot does not allow me to leave it and do a search for the original post, etc.
It was as a conclusive remark of a long, interesting post. The philosophical issues are open-ended (I can claim some claim on the matter -- I can quote a 'philosopher' or two). The linguistic points escape me. If I had wanted to study linguistics I would have done it! The dilettante points I always treasure! The thing NEVER had a pejorative implicatum. And I think Kramer should know about it, perhaps, and so, ... But he'll say that whatever the word means in Italian, as HE uses it means someone who, in the context, cannot claim to a claim which is philosophic or linguist. It's a dilettanteish point. But no such thing! There are, on this matter:
-- philosophical point -- the use of 'it'.
-- linguistic point -- the use of 'it'
-- other point -- the use of 'it'.
He is saying that a philosopher or a linguist may fee professionally obliged to reply, or to have a ready answer, but I wouldn't think so.
-- Grice loved to comment how when in the Playgroup they played for weeks on the distinction of 'highly' versus 'very' to arrive to no "philosophical conclusion" -- this is a technical point in Grice. They were looking for criteria to say, "This point is philosophical; this one is not".
-- He recalls how his undergrad. mate, under Hardie would feel upset when after a five-minute lapse of silence, Hardie would come up with, "And what is the meaning of 'of'?". It's like, surely Grice's mate expected, a deeper philosohical point. The mate unsaw the philosophical implicature of the difference between the objective and subjective use of the genitive and the particle 'of' ('the fear of the enemies' say -- what is the meaning of 'of'?). Etc.