In this case of Acculeo -- passage below -- Grice and Speranza examine the idea of a 'mother tongue' for Romolo and Remo -- if a wolf -- they would still be able of m-intentions even if their mother was not. If Acca gets into the picture, they got STEP-MOTHER TONGUE, or FOSTER-MOTHER TONGUE instead, and successfully so! Can we reconstruct a passage betweeen a member of this family and a sceptic who doubts that Romolo (never mind Remo) learned his lingo from the Acculeio's mythical ancestor -- with Acc. showing that SHE (Acca) possibly taught HIS ANCESTORS to speak, too -- hence the curia -- "which is more than can be said about YOUR ancestors, I presume" -- to which the co-conversationalist may respond that 'we all learn our mother tongue from our mother -- lingua matrix --and that's analytic". (The dialogue in Latin, with translation and implicatures in English only. Grice points out that 'lingua matrix' is anachronically applied to Acculeo's concerns, though. Input? Feedback? Thanks What's in a (Ancient Roman) name? -- sort of thing. Passage:

Yes, Accoleius gives Speranza a very pretty case, because the whole thing turns on a joke that is not merely a joke: if the wolf was the biological nurse, Acca Larentia is the linguistically more useful foster-mother. A wolf may have intentions in Grice’s broad zoological imagination, or at least proto-intentional behaviour, but she will not teach Romulus and Remus Latin. Acca, if she enters the myth, supplies not milk but uptake. She gives them a human conversational environment. The “mother tongue,” therefore, becomes a “foster-mother tongue,” which is not a bad name for civilisation.

The phrase lingua matrix would indeed be anachronistic as applied to Roman antiquarian concerns. The Romans could speak of sermo patrius, lingua Latina, sermo Latinus, perhaps lingua materna in later or analogous terms, but lingua matrix has the air of a later analytic joke dressed in Latin. Grice would object, not because it is useless, but because it pretends to be more ancient than it is. Speranza would keep it, of course, but with a raised eyebrow and a footnote large enough to raise another.

Reconstructed dialogue:

Acculeius: “Dicis lupam pueris lac dedisse; ego Accam verba dedisse dico.”

Translation: “You say that the she-wolf gave the boys milk; I say that Acca gave them words.”

Implicature: Biological nurture does not explain linguistic competence. If Romulus becomes a founder, something more than suckling must have occurred.

Scepticus: “Fabula est. Quis credat Romulum a muliere Acculeia sermonem accepisse?”

Translation: “It is a fable. Who would believe that Romulus received speech from an Acculeian woman?”

Implicature: The family’s claimed antiquity is being treated as opportunistic myth-making. The sceptic refuses the move from Acca Larentia to the gens Accoleia/Acculeia.

Acculeius: “Qui urbem condidit, prius responsa reddidit; qui responsa reddidit, aliquando audire didicit.”

Translation: “He who founded a city first gave answers; he who gave answers once learned to listen.”

Implicature: Political foundation presupposes conversational competence. Romulus cannot be imagined as legislator, commander, or founder unless he was first trained into speech and uptake.

Scepticus: “Omnes a matre linguam discimus; hoc paene analyticun est.”

Translation: “We all learn language from our mother; that is almost analytic.”

Implicature: The sceptic tries to close the issue by appeal to ordinary conceptual grammar: mother tongue means language learned from one’s mother.

Acculeius: “Paene, inquis; ibi habitat fabula.”

Translation: “Almost, you say; there the fable lives.”

Implicature: The word “almost” opens the conceptual space. Mother tongue is not analytically tied to biological maternity if fosterage can perform the maternal linguistic role.

Scepticus: “At lupa mater fuit, si fabulae credimus.”

Translation: “But the wolf was the mother, if we believe the tale.”

Implicature: The sceptic presses the absurdity. If myth is admitted, it seems to make the wolf, not Acca, the mother.

Acculeius: “Lupa mammas habuit; Acca sermonem. Utram matrem lingua sequitur?”

Translation: “The wolf had teats; Acca had speech. Which mother does language follow?”

Implicature: The decisive distinction is between bodily nurture and linguistic formation. The relevant mother for a mother tongue is the one who provides speech, not merely milk.

Scepticus: “Tum dicis Romulum linguam nutricis habuisse?”

Translation: “Then you say Romulus had the language of his nurse?”

Implicature: The sceptic concedes the shift from biological to foster relation, but tries to make it sound socially diminished.

Acculeius: “Nutricis, matris, civitatis: tria nomina, una disciplina.”

Translation: “Of nurse, mother, city: three names, one discipline.”

Implicature: Language-learning is civic training. The household, foster-mother, and city are continuous institutions of uptake.

Scepticus: “Et hoc ad curiam Acculeiam quid pertinet?”

Translation: “And what has this to do with the Acculeian curia?”

Implicature: The sceptic demands the genealogical payoff. He suspects the argument is sliding from mythic linguistics to family prestige.

Acculeius: “Si curia nomen Accae servat, non sanguinem iactamus sed vocem.”

Translation: “If the curia preserves Acca’s name, we boast not of blood but of voice.”

Implicature: The claim is not brute biological descent but cultural transmission. The family’s name is treated as preserving a role in Rome’s earliest communicative formation.

Scepticus: “Nimis acute.”

Translation: “Too sharp.”

Implicature: The sceptic acknowledges the cleverness while implying sophistry. “Sharp” also glances toward aculeus, thorn or needle.

Acculeius: “Acculeius sum; aculeum ferre licet. Acca, si vera est, maiores tuos quoque loqui docuit; quod de maioribus tuis, opinor, dici non semper potest.”

Translation: “I am an Acculeius; I may carry a little thorn. Acca, if she is real, taught your ancestors too to speak; which, I suppose, cannot always be said of yours.”

Implicature: The family-name joke becomes social retaliation. Acculeius turns scepticism about his ancestry into scepticism about the interlocutor’s own conversational inheritance.

Grice/Speranza analysis: the sceptic’s mistake is to treat “mother tongue” as though it named a biological source by conceptual necessity. Acculeius replies that the relevant concept is not birth but acquisition. A mother tongue is the language in which one is brought into recognisable human exchange. If the biological mother is absent, dead, lupine, divine, or merely unavailable, the foster-mother may occupy the functional place. Thus the phrase “foster-mother tongue” is comic but philosophically exact.

The Gricean point is that Romulus and Remus require not just vocalisation but m-intentions. They must learn that noises, gestures, responses, commands, refusals, promises, and threats can be produced with the intention that another recognise the intention behind them. A wolf may respond, signal, warn, summon, and perhaps even coordinate; but she does not initiate the twins into Roman public meaning. Acca Larentia, as foster-mother, supplies the human practice in which meaning becomes communicative rather than merely expressive.

This is why the curia matters. If Acculeia is linked, however mythically or dubiously, with Acca, the family’s antiquity becomes less a claim about blood and more a claim about institution. It is not “our ancestor bore Romulus,” but “our name remembers the woman through whom the founders became speakers.” That is a far more Speranzian boast. Blood is vulgar. Uptake is civilised.

The sceptic’s “we all learn our mother tongue from our mother” is useful because it sounds analytic and is not. It trades on an ordinary-language convenience. In the usual case, mother and linguistic nurturer coincide, so the phrase passes unchallenged. But myth supplies an abnormal case, and abnormal cases are where Grice and Austin liked to watch ordinary language sweat. Romulus has a wolf-mother, a foster-mother, a civic destiny, and eventually a language. Which one grounds “mother tongue”? The answer is not settled by grammar but by the practice one is trying to explain.

So the dry Speranzian formula would be this: Romulus may have received milk from the wolf, but he did not receive Latin from her. If Acca Larentia is brought in, Rome’s first language is not exactly a mother tongue, but a foster-mother tongue. It is learned not from nature but from nurture, not from mammal to cub but from addressee to future speaker. That is why Accoleius can tease the sceptic: Acca may have taught even your ancestors to speak, which is more than your present argument proves of them.