The Whisky Principle

--- by JLS
----- for the GC

--- I WAS ONCE CONVERSING WITH ZWICKY AND HORN. ZWICKY was telling us how his surname is Swiss in origin. We were (rather, Horn and Zwicky and others were) discussing the unphonematicity of "Zweck". There is NO such phonemic combination in English, so the NAME HAS to be furrin. Zwicky explained that there was a problem with the -cky, too. I don't recall the particulars -- must have them somewhere else -- but Horn suggested that a more natural phonological evolution of this linguist's surname ("Zwicky", not "Horn") to match English natural phonetics would be "Whisky" (properly metathesised). "Horn", on the other hand, is Indo-European.

-----

Anyway, 'whisky' is NOT English. It is CELTIC. The Scots spell it 'whiskie'. The 'wh-' is strong. It means 'water of life'.

--- J. KENNEDY comments that it's never

"don't"

in Eire, and Ulster,

but

"do not"

----

Zwicky has famously put forward a similar thesis. We were criticising Grice on "not" and he goes, "Surely, 'Ain't she sweet?' DOES not feature 'not'. It features 'ain't'"

For Zwicky,

"The King of France isn't bald"

-- projects different truth-conditions, and not just implicata, from (or 'than' as my friend, the illiterate one, prefers)

--

"The King of France is not bald".

I wouldn't (i.e. woud NOT) know!