Investigations of a Dog

Andrew Hickey linked to a post at the Universe of Discourse about syntax, arguing against a syntactical rule which says that the hypothetical verb “to flimp” can’t exist. Go and read that post for more explanation. While reading it occurred to me that the search for a universal syntax often ignores culturally specific meanings, and that sometimes arguments against it do too. David Dowty suggests the counter-example that “to cuckold” is “to have sexual intercourse with the woman who is married to”. For example, in the sentence “Peter cuckolded John”, John is the direct object. But if you expand it to Dowty’s version (“ Peter had sex with the woman who is married to John”) the woman is now an object (I’m a bit vague on whether she’s direct, or whether “sex” is the direct object and she’s indirect!), and John has been relegated to an adjectival clause which describes the woman. That’s one way of defining cuckold, but it seems to be very specific to modern Western liberal individualism. Having sex (probably consensual) with a woman who happens to have a husband. But things were different in cultures and societies which used the word cuckold more frequently than we do, such as early-modern England. In early-modern gender ideology wives were supposed to be subordinate to husbands. To cuckold a man was to take his property, and undermine his authority and masculinity. To put it another way, it was to injure him by using his wife, just like to stab someone is to injure them by using a sharp object. The indirect object implied by the verb is what is used to carry out the action. In Latin we would use the ablative of means to describe this relationship. A wife is necessary for cuckolding to take place, but she is absent from that sentence. Not even an object. Of course this is horribly misogynistic, but cuckold is a horribly misogynistic word from a horribly misogynistic culture.

This does not prove that “flimp” can’t exist. In fact Dowty’s cuckold example proves that it is syntactically possible. His interpretation is more possible now than it was 400 years ago, but that’s all down to social and cultural changes. It isn’t a syntax issue. Syntax allows many possibilities which aren’t used in practice, perhaps because they’re just not useful enough. But what is useful can be heavily influenced by social, cultural and political context, and therefore can change quite a lot. Taking “cuckold” and “stab” as starting points, I’ve been wondering how many others verbs there are which strongly imply an indirect object, and how this implication might be specific to certain times and places. There are some obvious modern examples where the verb is the same as, or derived from, the noun. You can’t phone someone without using a phone. But I’m pretty sure that cuckold isn’t derived from a word for wife. In order for the concept to make sense there has to be a social and cultural context which at least includes marriage (perhaps a specific form of marriage), and certain norms of sexual behavior. In the context of early modern England patriarchal hierarchy and definitions of masculinity add extra meanings which are not necessarily apparent today. These meanings have very little to do with syntax.

Following on from this, I think “pray” might be another example. An ancient Roman might pray to one of many gods. Catholics only have one god, but they could also pray to saints. But when a protestant prays, there is only one possibility. Feudal homage might be another source of examples. I’m a bit vague on the details, but there were probably circumstances where “I am going to pay homage” could only mean paying it to one specific person. It’s starting to look like power might be very significant here. A person would have to be very important to a lot of people before it was worth combining their name into a verb in the manner of “flimp”. (This is starting to remind me of a post at Babel’s Dawn about how semantics is now looking more important than syntax, but I can’t remember exactly which post it was.)

(Incidentally, I don’t think the wank example given at Universe of Discourse really works because “to wank to” has the preposition “to” tacked onto it, and requires the indirect object to be explicitly included in order to make a complete sentence.)