---- by JLS
------- for the GC
---- I WILL THANK KRAMER FOR HAVING MADE EXPLICIT TO ME how I was misusing 'date', crassly, to mean, as per 3a' below, where the etymon is exactly as Kramer has it, and which survives in "at a later date", as NOT being redundant. "I will do it at a date", while it ALSO indicates that the utterer will do it at a LATER date, seems to be a requisite.
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How many 'senses' does 'date' have? (I will follow Grice in taking date-the-fruit as ANOTHER word, not another sense -- cfr. his views on 'vice' -- he was caught in the grip of a vice". "The date of the date is nondated".
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From an online source. The dogma for this particular dictionary goes:
"date
1. 1. Time stated in terms of the day, month, and year."
--- This seems to beg the question as to why that is chosen as 1.1. Cfr. publicist talking of the A1 group or target of a producdt. It does not seem perhaps to have been the original use?
"1.2. A statement of calendar time, as on a document." This is good but possibly otiose. Surely one could say that a 'marriage' is an activity, but it's also a statement of such an act, as on a document. Etc. So this sub-sense I would explain via conversational implicature, if I had to accept, as I won't, that 1.1 gives the 'sense'.
"2. A specified day of a month.". This is a typical manoevure in dictionaries. I reject it. Surely for every concept there is, unless you are Roscelin, the individual under it, and the genus. We don't need to be told that there's no General Date unless you care to provide, every now or then (rather than 'and' then) a specification for it. Who would be idiotic enough to say, "You see? I was right! The dictionary DOES recognise 'a specified day' as one of the meaning of date!' Plus, what's this obsession with month. Surely for ANY calendar division this would seem to hold. So I do not recognise 2 as a separate sense.
"3. 1. A particular point or period of time at which something happened or existed, or is expected to happen." I.e. 'time' --. There still is the issue that in the phrase, 'at a later date', or 'at a date', it means 'day' as per the utterer. A New Yorker over the phone with a New Zealander cannot trade on the fact that the New Zealander will be experiencing TWO different dates for what the New Yorker regards as one.
"3.2. In plural "dates". The years of someone's birth and death: Beethoven's dates were 1770 to 1827." Since this is a fixed collocation, and in plural, it shouldn't bother us. "1770 and 1827" as oppose to Elise and Leonor.
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"4. The time during which something lasts; duration." This relates to 3.1. of course." In fact it seems to mean just the same.
"5. The time or historical period to which something belongs: artifacts of a later date." This is again the same alleged sense '3' with 'date' meaning 'time'.
"6. An appointment: a luncheon date with a client; a date with destiny. See Synonyms at engagement." This is metonymic, and thus an implicature. It seems dysphemistic to call by name someone who is 'just' a 'date' in this 'sense' and so 'date' is preferred. The Merriam-Webster manual of style says it is a rude thing. (Yes, I was checking, no luck, to see if they mention the "later" redundancy of "at a later date". They do say that 'on' IS redundant in "later on".
"7. 1. An engagement to go out socially with another person, often out of romantic interest. 1. One's companion on such an outing." Well, THIS was the meaning "Elise" or "Leonor" I was referring above. To have to divide 'senses' because of the nature of the link seems extremely otiose and a grand breach of Grice, "Do not multiply senses beyond necessity." It's like someone were to say, "You see, I was right: Mr. Henderson WAS my date!" "But you he never displayed any romantic interest on you!" "Never say never".
"8. An engagement for a performance: has four singing dates this month." This is like a 'one-night' stand sort of thing.
The dictionary notes:
"to date. Until now: To date, only half of those invited have responded." This confirms Kramer's take on the 'implicature'. "Date" is really RIGHT now. (to-date). So at a later date is anything which is NOT now, and postcedes now. It is customarily employed only when a dramatic change of the numeral of the DAY occurs. "To date, 20 responded". Half an hour later: "To date, 26 responded". "Wrong -- we are still on the same date".
The etymology -- does it clarify?
"[Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin data, from Latin data (Romae), issued (at Rome) (on a certain day),". "feminine past participle of dare, to give; see d- in Indo-European roots.]"
But are we sure this was the feminine, cannot it be neuter plural: Datum-Data? No. It does mean 'the day' FEMININE in Latin, dies, dei. Dies could ALSO be MASCULINE, but obviously it could never have been neuter. "Datum" COULD Have referred to a particular day (masculine -- but used in the accusative -- I chose a given day -- I would think, for idiolects that have 'day' as masculine. Or something.
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Grice writes of something, "I'll have to leave that for a longer day" (WoW: RE, 1987 -- very last sentence of the whole book -- (or something). But then, at a date I will have to elaborate on shorter days, too. Etc.
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every now or then (rather than 'and' then)
ReplyDeleteThere you go again.
"every now and then" is a Natural English idiom - a monosyllabic rendition of "occasionally." I do not know what "every now or then" means. I would ordnarily guess that it's a botched attempt at "every now and then," but you explicitly rule that out. So with what am I left?
Yeah, "every" has more than one syllable - ya gotta allow some poetic license - the expression is mostly monosyllabic, and Anglo-Saxon, too.
ReplyDeleteJust one of those things, I guess. (One of those bells that now and then rings...)
I guess I was indicating how can it be 'every now AND then'?
ReplyDeleteLet's consider 'every' to range over 'x'. For all 'now' and all 'then'?
Or: for all (now and then)?
I would think the former:
'every soldier and sailor'
'every soldier or sailor'
----
"I love every soldier and sailor"
--
"I do it every now AND then"
---
But I think the difference may be that while it is possible for an utterer that the utterer loves every soldier and loves every sailor, the 'now and then' seems trickier.
"I do it EVERY now and then"
"I do it every now and every then"
--- Literally, it would mean, I suppose that the utterer can't HELP doing it.
Quite the opposite, from what you allege is the 'conversational implicature': 'occasionally'.
Etc.
The disjunction was related to "at a later date". If it's NOW it cannot be a LATER date.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the best way here is to take the TIME of the date:
April 11, 2010, Sunday, 3 pm.
AS A DATE.
At a later date then may mean: a couple of hours from now where I shall be at the opera (with "Fidelio").
You may say it's the SAME date.
Oddly, the Italians must have thought something about this. No Opera was indicated (by law) to last more than a date. No opera could extend past 12:00 am, which I think is one of the best resolution the Milanese ever thought of.
(It put a stop to those indigestible never-ending tirades).
"At any date" -- vs. 'every now and then'.
"any now and then" --
etc.
We do not have the option to dissect an idiom - read it "literally." It's a character string that means "occasionally," because when Anglophones say it, they mean "occasionally." You can use "every now or again" to mean "occasionally," too, if you like, or you can use it to mean something else. I would just say that in so doing, you are not preferring it over "every now and again" any more than you are preferring it over any other arbitrarily selected character string.
ReplyDeleteFor confirmation, I asked my strife (rather than "trouble and strife, which is redundant"), and she agrees. I assume a cockney would get my drift, but only by interpreting "strife" as shorthand for the longer expression, but I also suspect he would find it odd. I don't actually know how Cockneys deal with deviations from "strict" rhyming slang. Using the one off-color example I know, I would expect "Trub" and not "strife" to be shorthand for the wife. Either way, we don't get to "correct" the redundancy, because an idiom cannot be redundant, qua idiom.
ReplyDeleteYou are right. And thanks for reporting. As it happens Cockneys (but I'm not sure if this is JUST Cockney -- I call it just 'rhyming slang': it seems to thrive in Australia, and, who knows, Gloucestershire, as you may soon find out) a truncated slang.
ReplyDeleteI recall analying this in detail when we were staging for a local club -- MY club -- Potter's Pennies from Heaven. I had to sing, and dance and accompany myself with the ukelele and all, in "Let's misbehave". This number is sung by the pimp, who meets the protagonist in a bar.
"I love your bristols", he says.
She answers, "Bristols?" (She is a provincial, oddly, from the Forest of Dean, not far from the Cotswolds).
"Titties", he adds -- "Bristol City -- titty".
So I think a female may know LESS of a Cockney rhyme than a male.
My favourite is Flanagan and Allen's song. It tells of a prostitute in France known to father who now advices the son,
"If a grey-haired lady says "How's your father" that'll be mademoiselle (from Armenteers).
As it happens, that's Cockney for "a bit of the other".
And then of course there's 'berk', which is a good example of Grice's "prim and proper Aunt Matilda" who knows that the expression means 'but would rather be seen dead than uttering it". Oddly, Crystal ("Language") has it as short for Berkeley Hunt, but it's BerkSHIRE hunt, closer to the Cotswolds.
Then there's 'tart' which has now assumed a good meaning, but it's originally short for 'raspberry tart', 'sweet-heart', i.e. prostitute. To avoid ambiguity (Grice, "avoid ambiguity"), Cockneys use "rasp" to mean "fart" (raspberry tart). Then there's "I've known him for DONKEY's ears," which is very silly for 'ears'. Grice finds 'trub' just more than enough to make his point, alas. Etc.
Cockneys use the first word and drop the second.
ReplyDeleteKramer uses the the second word and drops the first.
We are not dealing with a Cockney Kramer.
Perhaps.
Ah. Thanks.
ReplyDelete"She is my strife", he says. Yes, 'trouble' and 'strife' do look like synonymous and why NOT keep the 'trub', as he suggests?
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Oddly, if 'and' is as Grice says it is, then 'trouble and strife' and 'strife and trouble' are identical.
Are there pieces of Cockney that keep the SECOND? "dog and bone", "Pass me the dog"?
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Etc.
And of course, it's Grice's example:
ReplyDelete"He said, "Smith couldn't get on without his trouble and strife".
"He meant: "He found his wife indispensanble" (Grice's paraphrase), WoW:214, originally 1948.
--
It's typical of Grice to use double idioms:
trouble-and-strife: wife
get-on without: dispense?
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In the first bit, it's just the CODE -- there is a reason to the rhyme of course: it's not like 'mince pies' to mean 'eyes' which is just silly. Some people think that the body of the telephone looks like the dog, and the other bit the bone, so that's logical. It's less logical why a 'berk' looks like a Berkshire hunt. Etc.
-- the 'get on' to mean 'dispense' won't do. We need, 'without': to mean the opposite of 'dispense' and get IN-dispensable.
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I would need to find out if a Griceian scholar has examined Grice's example in detail. Etc. I wonder what's Cockney slang for hubby, too.
I wonder what's Cockney slang for hubby, too.
ReplyDeleteAndy Capp?
I dropped the first word because I needed to preserve the rhyme while eliminating the offending redundancy. I was not trying to create shorthand - I was trying to edit the whole idiom, as JL did with "every now or then" to make it more Gricesan.
Thanks. Yes, it IS offending. Sorry about that.
ReplyDelete"That remark, 'Smith couldn't get on without his trouble and strife,' meant that Smith found his wife indispensable".
--- and that the utterer of the remark was an IDIOT.
--- Because:
He said it to someone (or it was reported to someone over whose head it went). Someone, a pure soul, who had been ALL of his life, this far, spared of the offenses of the lowest classes in that ultra-urban centre that London has become.
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The example Grice uses wrongly -- in this case to suggest that of course, on top, the remark may be totally FALSE and ungrounded. So 'means' has nothing to do with what 'means' means when we say, "Those little spots all over the body means that he may have the measles, after all".
---- Grice wants to say that "MEANS" in the remark about the trouble-and-strife is non-factive. It is The REAL 'mean', though, or derives from the REAL 'mean' of an UTTERER meaning something.
Thanks about the Andy Capp. Will check it and report.
"I dropped the first word because I needed to preserve the rhyme while eliminating the offending redundancy."
ReplyDeleteThere is no redundancy. Unless you are not now being consistent with your previous good point regarding phrases such as 'every now and then' which are not to be opened up and considered word by word to determine what they mean but exist as functional units, 'every now and then' = 'occasionally'.
'Trouble and strife' = 'wife'
Of course, there is no redundancy. I was parodying JL's effort to "fix" "every now and then." To do that to a bit of rhyming slang, I had to preserve the rhyme while removing the literal redundancy.
ReplyDeleteYes. Oddly, rhyming slang, on top of offending people, offends Grice,
ReplyDelete"Be brief"
because the replaced version, "trouble and strife", e.g., is always LONGER than the thing.
So I suppose this is a mark of what Marx called 'the otioseness of proletariat'. (He lived in London and is buried in posh Harrogate).
I suppose the underlying point is that they (the Cockneys) HAVE the time to do it (if you've seen a Pearly Queen you see she has spent some extra, leisurable, time, too, doing that tacky thing). And also that 'wife' won't DO for them. Because they incorporate the 'poetry of a nation' (It's clear to see I rather go with provincial, unspoilt rural England every day, or any time). So they are insisting that there is a FEATURE (call it the 'trouble and...') that they think lacks in the 'standard' way to refer to things, 'strife'/wife.
At some point, the pressure of Grice, 'be brief', struck them back. But, in their utter otiosity, they cut the phrase and kept the idiotic first part, to indicate that the rhyme be lost --. Thus, this 'be brief' use of the maxim is just a PARODY. Because they are still sticking with the implicated rhyme -- as when they say, "He's a berk".
Who invented Cockneys?
"Of course, there is no redundancy. I was parodying JL's effort to "fix" "every now and then." To do that to a bit of rhyming slang, I had to preserve the rhyme while removing the literal redundancy."
ReplyDeleteI did not see a rhyme being preserved, either, apart from the rhyme between the two words being interchanged.
But no doubt there is an explanation for that, too, as there is an explanation for everything, the common thread of which...
Maybe JLS will even have an explanation for rendering Highgate as Harrogate (which is in Yorkshire). The explanation might be 'rank ignorance', but I doubt it!
How about any entry, JLS, on the nature of "Of course..."
ReplyDeleteSome of the slang may originate from that used by thieves and prostitutes.
Are you familiar with Palare? Polari?
And here, from a poem, On the Prigging Lay
Ten or a dozen “cocks of the game,”
On the prigging lay to the flash-house came,
Lushing blue ruin and heavy wet
Till the darkey, when the downy set.
All toddled and begun the hunt
For readers, tattlers, fogies, or blunt.
II
Whatever swag we chance for to get,
All is fish that comes to net:
Mind your eye, and draw the yokel,
Don’t disturb or use the folk ill.
Keep a look out, if the beaks are nigh,
And cut your stick, before they’re fly.
III
As I vas a crossing St James’s Park
I met a swell, a well-togg’d spark.
I stops a bit: then toddled quicker,
For I’d prigged his reader, drawn his ticker;
Then he calls—“Stop thief!” thinks I, my master,
That’s a hint to me to mizzle faster.
Touche!
ReplyDeleteHighgate!
Oddly, I think J. O. Urmson, the greatest living philosopher, was born in Harrogate. Blame it on me thinking of him.
I SHOULD go to Highgate more often.
I love a cemetery.
I seem to know most things about them, so that was a bit of a malaprop, indeed, which connects with Grice:
"That remark, "Karl Marx is buried in Harrogate," meant that Karl Marx is buried in Highgate." --- or something.
I did not see a rhyme being preserved, either, apart from the rhyme between the two words being interchanged.
ReplyDeleteWhat other rhyme would matter?
What other rhyme did?
ReplyDeleteI've been to Highgate. There is a section that is free (Marx) and another that is not (who knows).
ReplyDeleteAround Marx are clustered various dead adherents of his ideas.
I used to edit a magazine that we called "Mischmasch" (apres the one that Carroll edited). I keep the issues. One was on Edward Lear, and I was engaged in the writing of the bios. So I tend to remember that Edward Lear is ALSO buried in Highgate. (I know he lived in Liguria for ages) -- should check this out.
ReplyDeleteAs for rhymes:
Indeed, there is only ONE rhyme-- the end rhyme:
'wife' and 'strife'
NOT A GOOD rhyme by the look or sound of it. Because 'w' is not a consonant, but a semi-vowel /uai/ strictly; yet 'strife' only echoes the /ai/, not the /uai/.
Kramer did consider that as per logic, the truncated version SHOULD be 'trub' for 'troub-le'; instead he uses 'strife' which he assumes, rightly, that a Cockney would find odd.
I'm not sure 'trouble' is MORE offending than 'strife' though. I would think the opposite. Recall my Old 'ductch', we some think short of dutchess:
trough thick and thin
o what a wife that she has been
it's my old dutch!
----
Etc.
I cannot think of the Cockney 'trouble and strife' without thinking of "My Old Dutch" because the singer (Chevalier, who composed it) is saying that through all their trials, tribulations, and strifes, they are still together. The only problem with this approach is that 'husband' does not rhyme with 'strife'. As I noted in "Kyen kwen", this blog, the Japanese have an interesting piece of slang to refer to 'husband' (I think Andy Capp is Hartlepool, only): it translates as 'big piece of rubbish'.
Edward Lear - he cropped up last night on a podcast, apparently there are some drawings he made of macaws kept at the Linnaeus Library.
ReplyDeleteYes. I have the complete Lear in the Swimming-Pool Library. He was first engaged as a water-colour and portrait painter. In some good art collection books, there are paintings (great canvas) of his trip to Egypt. Yet, of course, for his rhymes and things, he preferred a very naive caricature sort of drawing. I think he drew most of the Psytachidae, which I THINK is the name of the parrots. We have quite a few in Argentina, and Buenos Aires even. Buenos Aires has a few of the monk parakeets which have become a plague in Branford, where I lived (in Connecticut). They don't quite match the weather in Branford, poor things, and they die every season (they cannot survive a winter). Plus, the locals anihilate them because, with lack of palms that they prefer to make their nest, they make them in telephone polls. The ones I enjoy seeing are in my favourite park in Buenos Aires, the Saint Martin Park, which features some good palms. Buenos Aires lies on a river, literally, and these parrots enjoy the sort of 'jungle' ('selva tropical' -- or 'marginal' really) that is a very THIN stretch along the river. I used to have one as pet when I lived in a villa.
ReplyDeleteLike Lear, I love to draw birds and the parrot, while perhaps not beautiful or graceful, is pretty easy to paint, and especially to COLOUR. Etc.
Ob Grice: "The owl and the pussy". We tend to assume that the 'pussy' is female -- but surely we do use 'pussy' to apply to male (cat), too, no? For some horrible reason: the symbol of Philosophy is the Owl of Minerva. Hate the bird -- but have a few statuettes of them in my Swimming-Pool Library to mark that we are in the "Philosophy" section, etc.
Only that Edward Lear is buried in San Remo... Never mind. SOMEONE who's biography I wrote for an issue of MISCHMASCH was (I think) buried in Highgate. I may search of celebrities and report. Or not.
ReplyDeleteWhat Lear had done in Highgate, I seem to read, and that's what I possibly wrote in "Mischmasch" is BORN in Highgate (but I would now think, "Holloway") rather than died there.
ReplyDelete