È un fiore

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

---- MY FRIEND J. M. GEARY WAS RETELLING HOW A MAN APPROACHED him by the river Mississipi, and asked out of the blue:

"What is That?"

My friend replied,

"Oh, that's the Desoto Bridge".

"No. The thing singing next to it --"

"The bird?"

"Yes".

"Well, bird".

"But what type of a bird?"

"A mocking-bird"

--- My friend reflected:

What's closest to us stays farthest away

And reminds me how unGricean some Italians can be. Lawrence, the controversial author of controversial "Lover of Chatterley", reminisces he was strolling along the Tuscany fields, and asked his fellow peasant:

"Now -- what _is_ that?"

"Oh, ..."

"È un fiore."

Literally, "It's a flower" -- pro-drop, "Is a flower".

Lawrence reminisces: "I had just read ch. iii, section 2 of Mill's System of Logic, and it struck me that the Italians will perhaps never get the sous-entendu. For there was something in my apt question, "What is _that_?" which obviously went over the head of my fine friend, who, on top of that, thought that I was an idiot, in not recognising a flower from his back."

---- Cooperative principle in comments.