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Expanding family

In the middle of an ESSLLI lecture I got an sms from my girlfriend: “We are having a baby! Wheeeee!”

At such moments it’s helpful to be a pragmatician.1 My reasoning pattern went something like this, where steps 5 and 6 exemplify the pragmatician’s approach to meaning (approximate processing times given in parentheses):

  1. Aaaaaaaaargh! (17s)
  2. It’s not possible! We’ve been careful haven’t we?! (7s)
  3. Whatever will my mother say? (1.3s)
  4. Wait a second… (1s)
  5. If she meant “We’re having a baby”, wouldn’t she have called to tell me so? (3s)
  6. So she can’t actually have meant “We’re having a baby”… (1.7s)
  7. So she must have meant instead…

She bought me a baglama.

Tikitu and Marama welcome Takis to the family.

And Tikitu apologises to his mother, if she had a heart attack reading this.

Notes:

  1. Okay, the accepted term is ‘pragmaticist’. Just don’t confuse it with ‘pragmatist’. [↪]
This was written by tikitu. Posted on Sunday, August 26, 2007, at 5:08 pm. Tagged . Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

6 Comments

  1. Olga wrote:

    Just a very short comment: You write at some point that the Turkish Bağlama is much more similar to a Greek bouzouki than to a Greek baglama. Not true. The Turkish Bağlama is not similar to a Greek buzuki (or to a Greek baglama) at all! Only dimensionwise maybe, but still their actual shape and construction is much different and their sound as well. Maybe you already know that, but it is not clear by the way you put it (in any case, I think you must admit that the mother may sometimes know better the differences between her children ;-)). Baglamas on the other hand is a buzuki, only a shrunken one.

    And: I hope you are going to be a responsible father. Congratulations!

    Monday, August 27, 2007 at 12:04 pm | Permalink
  2. tikitu wrote:

    Oh! I must admit I assumed that it sounded like a bouzouki, since it looks so similar. Silly me… Palm Guitars have a few, perhaps I should go by and try one out to see what it really sounds like.

    Monday, August 27, 2007 at 1:04 pm | Permalink
  3. Olga wrote:

    You don’t have to! We already have one … in Greece. The instrument I got from Turkey is a saz (or Turkish Bağlama). I already told you, remember? So you should just buy a ticket to Greece and you’ll have the chance to have one saz at your place for free :-) But if you just read how it is constructed, you’ll understand that it can’t have the same sound as the Greek bouzouki.

    Monday, August 27, 2007 at 2:29 pm | Permalink
  4. Elizabeth wrote:

    In that case I shall send postcards to you ALL, hoorah!

    Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 2:36 pm | Permalink
  5. tikitu wrote:

    Whee, postcards!

    Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 2:59 pm | Permalink
  6. Takis wrote:

    Whee, postcards! (twang)

    Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 3:00 pm | Permalink