Semantic Fit in Riddles

Abstract

SEMANTIC FIT IN RIDDLES is comparable in some ways to the point of a joke, and is as difficult to discuss. In my tentative definition of the riddle genre in Africa, the so-called and (my Precedent and Sequent) were said to have features.' The term semantic refers to the meaning or meanings shared by both expressions. My attempt to achieve a strictly formal definition purposely excluded descriptive features which can be filled in by the folklorist, the anthropologist, and the linguist, and therefore the nature of fit in sample riddles was not examined. In suggesting that the meaning of a riddle may best be seen from the vantage point of the riddler himself, this was seen, not as part of the definition, but as a probable means of achieving it. Lee Haring, in his subsequent article, On Knowing the Answer, maintains that my discussion of fit undermines the relation of riddle answer to question.2 His principal objection is to the idea that the riddler is the one who invents the riddle, an idea implied by me only in the sense that at some time or other every riddle is of human origin. The creative role of the riddler can only be inferred from the riddles in current use. The question of a riddle's history is not relevant to the nature of its structure, but only possibly to its meaning. So long as there are people around to give it a meaning, preferably the contemporary poser of the riddle, it is of small consequence who invented it. Every time a riddle is posed, even one that is not original, it is posed as if for the first time. This is part of the riddling game of Let's pretend. I agree, of course, with Haring's statement that non-ritual riddles are carried on through oral tradition, but the truth of this does not affect the principle that the riddler is the sole judge of the riddle he poses. Haring's rhetorical question, Do bits of folklore really derive meaning only from those who invent them? cannot fairly be answered, not at