"Somewhere in the South of France", "In the countryside" rūrī, rūre -- NOT *rus

I propose that if we are speaking Latin and someone asks, in Latin,

Where does C live? (Cfr. Grice's answer: "Somewhere in the South of France")

and B wants to say, 'in the countryside', he can use the 'locative case' of 'countryside'.

In which case we have the analogue of Alison Hall's example in her Working Paper in Linguistics on fragments which are subpropositional. And so on. This is then to revise the Latin (but I should also do the Greek) for what Grice should have in mind then:

---

"In Latin, the functions of the locative case were mostly absorbed by the ablative, but a separate locative is found in a few words."

"The Latin locative case applies only to the names of cities and small islands and to a few other isolated words. The Romans considered all islands to be small except for Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Crete, and Cyprus. There are a few nouns that use the locative instead of a preposition: domus becomes domī (at home), rūs becomes rūrī (in the country), humus becomes humī (on the ground), militia becomes militiae (in military service, in the field), and focus becomes focī (at the hearth; at the center of the community)."

"For singular first and second declension, the locative is identical to the genitive singular form, and for the singular third declension the locative is identical to the ablative singular form. For plural nouns of all declensions, the locative is also identical to the ablative form. The few fourth and fifth declension place-name words would also use the ablative form for locative case."

"In archaic times, the locative singular of third declension nouns was actually interchangeable between ablative and dative forms, but in the Augustan Period the use of the ablative form became fixed. Therefore, both forms "rūrī" and "rūre" may be encountered."

"The first declension locative is by far the most common, because so many Roman place names were first declension: mostly singular (Roma, Rome; Hibernia, Ireland; etc., and therefore Romae, at Rome; Hiberniae, at Ireland), but some plural (Athenae, Athens; Cumae, Cuma etc., with Athenis, at Athens; Cumis, at Cumae). But there are a number of second declension names that would have locatives, too (Brundisium, Brindisi; Eboracum, York; with locatives Brundisiī, at Brindisi; Eboraci, at York, etc.)"

Hall wants to say that an utterance of

"ruri" or "rure" would indicate that the subpropositional structure is made evident. She would expect the nominative 'rus' if things were different.

This has some little bearing on Grice's problem with 'what is said' (a technicism in his writing).

Literally, what B said was "ruri" or "rure".

We need an oratio obliqua for that, else we cannot compute the conversational implicatum.

"B said, 'ruri' or 'rure'"
B meant that C lived in the countryside.
(B put forward the proposition, "C lives in the countryside" where I would never use that metaphysical mouthful, 'put forward the proposition', but you get my drift.
---- Under the circumstances, B implicated, say, that he is not sure WHERE in the countryside he lives ("which town in the South of France" he lives, Grice notes. One may argue that MOST of the South of France is not really 'townish' like that and that if C is wise, and rejects St. Tropez, she should leave somewhere in the countryside of the South of France, rather than 'in a town' -- etc.)