Grice on 'what' qua verb -- a gap in the English language?

--- by J. L. Speranza
------ for the Grice Club.

KRAMER (commentary, this blog) was mentioning that certain freedom (based on efficiency, properly) in the English language: the verbing of nouns, the nouning of verbs, etc. And then there's 'what'.

After considering his preference for 'do' over 'act' (as having, the latter a 'portentous and theatrical flavour') Grice goes on to 'explain' the 'grossly promiscuous behaviour of 'do'' --

What did the prisoner do then?
-- He hit me on the nose.
-- He fainted.
-- He burst out laughing.
-- He just sat there
-- Nothing at all: he just sat there.
-- He left his sandwiches untouched.

Grice notes that this 'grossly promiscuous behaviour' "has", "I think," he adds, "a grammatical explanation" -- "in fact", he also adds!

Grice notes:

"We are all familiar with the range of
interrogatives in English whose function is
to enquire"

--- this relates to Kramer's point about foci of 'act' and 'do'.

"to enquire," Grice goes on, "with respect to
a given category, which item within the
category could lend its name to achieve the
conversion of an open sentence into the
expression of a truth."

-- My AUNT is not familiar with that.

Grice goes on:

""When?" (at what time?), "where?" (at what place?),
"why" (for what reason?) are, each, examples
of such interrogatives; and some langauges, such as
Greek and Latin,"

--- in which he was fluent since his Clifton days -- as George Richardson recalls in his obituary of Grice for St. John's College, words to the effect: "his public school persona he exuded" --

"are even better equipped than English. All, or most
of these interrogative pronouns have INDEFINITE
counteparts; coreresponding to 'where' is 'somewhere';
to 'what?', 'something', and so on. Now there might
have been (thought in fact there is not)"

---- HENCE the gap -- cfr. Grice/Warnock on 'visum' -- I saw the visum of a cow -- as reported by Chapman, extensively.

"a class of expressions, parallel to the kinds
of pronouns (interrogative and indefinite) which I have
been considering, called PRO-VERBS."

What is a pro-verb?

Surely not a pro-noun.

"These" [pro-verbs] "would serve to make
inquiries about INDEFINITE references to the
category of items which predicates (or epithets)
ascribe to subjects, in a way exactly
parallel to the familiar range of pronouns."

---- At this point, someone with a more practical interest in lingo may have lost Grice -- or rather Grice would have lost the fellow. Grice goes on:

Consider

a. Q: Where did Socrates drink the hemlock?
b. A: In Athens.

SECOND SCENARIO (hypothetical in English, but not Latin or Greek):

i. A: Socrates whatted in 399 B. C.?
ii. Q: Drank the hemlock.


-- to quote Grice:

i. Socrates whatted in 399 B.C.?

(i) "might", Grice notes, "be answered by

ib. Drank the hemlock.

-- "just as "WHERE did Socrates drink the hemlock?"
is answered by "In Athens."

Grice goes on:

"Given that Socrates did drink the hemlock
in 399 B. C., we might have been able to say (ii)."

ii. There, I knew he somewhatted in 399 B. C.

---

Grice grants:

"We [may not be able to] talk" "grammatically" "in that way".

"BUT"

"we can come close to [it]" -- that fine Graeco-Roman thing --

"by using the verb 'do', and asking
(for example) (iii)."

iii. What did Socrates do in 399 B. C.?

----

Grice continues with the 'explanation':

"In its capacity a spart of a
makeshift pro-verb, "do" can stand in for
(be replaceable by) any verb
or verb phrase whatsoever; in which case it is
hardly surprising that it will do [so] little
to specify a narrowed-down range of actions [emphasis Grice's],
or of 'action-verbs'".

Which was Kramer's point -- what he was whatting, that is.

----