michigoose and michigas

[Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM]

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> writes:

>>>>>
(sorry about the old-newsiness; I've been away from my e-mail)
<<<<<

'Tis the season; I will take his words as describing my situation.

>>>>>
At 3:23 PM -0400 7/17/00, Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:
>ISTM* that this set consists of those species (word used loosely) whose
>female produces either eggs or milk that are economically useful:
>     cow
>     chicken
>     goose
>     duck

I agree with the generalization (as a NECESSARY but not SUFFICIENT
condition for female-genericity), or would agree if it were further
generalized along the lines of "species [etc.] whose female members are
more functionally useful to English speakers than their male counterparts
are", but question the inclusion of chickens among these.  I thought the
hens were the (specific) egg-layers, and they don't generify.  Chickens for
me are non-gender-specific (aren't roosters and hens both chickens?
<<<<<

I guess you've got me there.

>>>>>
I'm from NYC so I can't be sure).
<<<<<

AOL.

("What's America On-Line got to do with it?", I asked when someone on the
FILK_UK mailing list replied to a previous post as I just have. The
explanation was that the "translation" is "me too", based on the habit
attributed to AOL subscribers, who stereotypically don't have the slightest
grasp of newsgroup or list etiquette or customs, of quoting a long post in
full and adding no more content than "Me too.")

>>>>>
               I do share Mark's intuition on cows,
although (as John Lyons pointed out in his discussion of markedness in his
1977 SEMANTICS) the facts are slightly different for cows (vs. bulls) than
for e.g. lions/lionesses, dogs/bitches, or geese/ganders:  as he puts it,
"a lioness is a female lion" is OK, while "a bull is a female cow" only
works as a 'metalinguistic gloss'.  At the same time, though, you can (or
at least John Lyons, Mark, and I can) point to a mixed-sex bunch of
domestic cattle and refer to them as cows.
<<<<<

That's accurate for my intuitions.

Except that I wouldn't call a bull a female anything!

-- Mark, back from a week in The Green Prehuman Earth