I was once intrigued by the fact that in English
'child' meant originally 'young'
The use as a kinship term is 'derivative'. In most Romance languages, the issue involves TWO completely different lexemes. There is no implication that one's child has to be younger than you. Odd, these Romantics.
---
Suppose I meet 78-year old Mrs. Rowntree and 75-year old Einstein. Both are the children of Einstein. I meet them in a park.
On my return home, my wife asks,
"Did you see anyone in the park?"
"Yes, I saw two children", I say. Add no more. In the Romance languages, there is an implication that
he's nobody's child
is a contradictio.
Romulus and Remus -- were they nobody's children?
Etc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
An English lesson
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, and I love your way with words. The way you turn a simple indication, like "An English lesson" into a full berth of language. (meaning you double click and there you go). Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteBut yes. The song you refer to is very witty and would take time to analyse. I think there was a puzzle, related, "That man in the picture, or portrait". He is described in a very roundabout way, and it comes out, if you work out the genealogy, that "the man" is "you".
Etc.
With 'cild', OE for 'child', I'm not sure. The English lesson can expand further.
There is a film forthcoming in Argentine cinemas (I think), called "Hermanos" with my favourite Argentine film star, sort of, Graziella Borges. The bill for the film features her and a stand-up comedian, Antonio Gasalla, and the message is clear in the vernacular: it means that he and she are _siblings_ (hermanos). But 'hermanos' has the masculine ending to it that irritates me to describe _her_ (Graziella). Siblings seems a better term.
Offspring is perhaps a more neutral term than 'figli' to mean 'sons' literally, but which can include your daughter.
Odd. Etc.
But back to the implicature of the 'children in the park'.
Surely the contrived scenario: that the odd couple (it has to be mixed sexes) is Einstein's 'children' seems gratuitious.
Whoever you see, we assume, is 'somebody's child' (hence the contradictio, in the face of it, of 'nobody's child', title of 1930s song I understand).
But we are not saying "I met a child", etc. This not just because of the 'predator' side to it. But because we seem to get back to the EXPLICATURE of the implicature 'child'. It meant originally only 'young one' -- not kinshippic offspring. Or something.
But Mark Twain _was_ wrong as the novely song for 1947 you refer to testifies -- the fact that it's a children's song (child's song? -- isn't 'children' sic in plural pretentious under the circumstance?)
(And no, I AM teasing. It would be stupid to have the Grice Club to keep refuting Grice's spirit of things).
He possibly was wrong too when he has this narrative as written by the narrator's twin, originally.
He was, along with Ambrose Beirce, my dad's favourite writer. What a _wit_. And what a charm in the fluency of the prose of "Tom Sawyer". The fact that he was from the South but died in cold-weathered Hartford endears the man to me. And I too like his European extravanzas like "Rich man, beggarman, thief", and "King Arthur: the once and future king, in Yankeeland".