arm:leg =? penis:vagina

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 16, 2011, at 4:33 PM, Ronald Butters wrote:

> Larry, I don't understand how this "supports" JL's argument. As I understand his point, it is in part that it is extremely unlikely that today anybody would decide to revise their previously masculine sense of COCK to extend it to females as well (except for weird people who are allegedly motivated by "postmodernism"). I don't disagree with that, but it is irrelevant in that, so far as I know, nobody would support a contrary position.

Setting the record straight:

My argument supported Jon's because my point did not in fact touch on the question of whether COCK itself might have unisex uses, but on Jon's separate (but related) argument that the words we might think of as unisex terms for genitalia tend to be either euphemisms (like "privates") or technical (like "genitalia") and not everyday colloquial terms.  The analogy (as in the subject line above) was then made to "limb", and my point (drawing on Rosch's cognitive psychological framework) was that in both the case of "privates" and the case of "limb" we're dealing not just with euphemisms but with superordinate rather than basic level terms.  I wasn't referring to the history of COCK per se on this, although the Doten feeling-of-each-other's-cocks passage (which I'd also forgotten, even though I've cited it in two papers) would support your position on COCK straddling the gender line for some, as well as crossing it in one direction or the other diachronically.

LH

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