The "Every Now and Then" Implicature

---- Thanks to L. Kramer. I'm glad his wife agrees with him -- about the idiocy of my "every now OR then". I don't think I WILL use that expression, thanks. Oddly, 'and', some people say, does mean 'or' and vice versa -- this relates to De Morgan.

It's also odd that 'now' being an adverb, should be modified by 'every' like that. It's not every day we say. "The now is here to stay", or "The now of the appointment has arrived". Yet, you do say, 'every now' -- I cannot think of another adverb that 'every' modifies like that. You'll say 'then'. Yes, indeed. "The then was distant" seems ungrammatical. Yet we do say "every then" -- or every now and then.

"Every so often" you say (I think). So it seems indeed that 'every' applies to things like that.

The point may be one I dissected when analysing (for what goal, I forget) the distinction between:

All men are mortal.
Every man is mortal.

In Latin, there's only

"omnis homo est mortalis"

--- this is important because we stick to the SINGULAR. "Every man IS mortal" but all MEN ARE mortal. Seeing that in Logiclandish, 'every man is mortal' even if no man exists, the use of the plural seems more of a confusion.

In "Metaphysics in Logic," Warnock does observe that the use of the plural in "Some" is also merely implicatural. "Some students ARE from Syracuse". (I was going to write, 'stupid' but seeing that I want to argue that this is compatible with every one being so, I thought that rude. I suppose the 'from Syracuse' is less hurtful than 'stupid').

-----

"I only have ONE student from Syracuse in my class", the teacher remarked.

"Why, some students are from Syracuse".

"I just said 'one'"

"And I agree: the plurarity of 'some' is merely idiomatic -- (Ex)Fx & Gx."

I want to think THAT was some sort of implicature that Grice is thinking about when he does list the reading of "(Ex)" as "some (at least one)"

But note that what Grice has here, "Some (at least one)" requires a change in the verb, and thus it is a clumsy feature of style.

"Some (at least one) student is from Syracuse".

But surely that's a rude thing to say: "Some student is from Syracuse". So one wonders that Grice meant.

In the original plan (grand plan) for my PhD dissertation, I did mean to include:

not
and
or
if
all
some
the

-- the 7 particles that Grice uses and correlates with

-
&
v
->
(x)
(Ex)
(ix)

--- But I eventually just filled the thesis with the connectives only (and, or, and if) -- since mine was examination of the rationale behind a manoeuvre, not a survey of it. But I do keep material I gathered to reserach on this, and indeed, that seems to have been Grice's grand plan too.

----

So back to the 'every now and then'.

Kramer is right that an idiom is usually opaque so no need to analyse it in detail. Consider Buenos Ayres:

"I do it every so often"

---- Translate to Buenos Aires:

often: A menudo
so often: MUY A MENUDO
every so often: MUY A MENUDO

It seems one cannot say,

I sing so often.

It has to be, 'every so often'.

---- Etc.

So the etymological point, and this is back to what I wanted to say before the 'excursus' (Grice's polite term for total ramble or divertimento)
was the connection, etymological and historical between

'every' and "EVER"

which means always.

So 'every so often' perhaps does not exist and it's 'ever so often,' misheard, originally.

But can

'every now and then' be understood as a corruption from 'ever' also? Not that I wonder too deeply. Etc.