Re: [microsound] being 'political' in non-verbal music

[Kassen <kassen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Exegene;

> i submit that a language-candidate is indeed a language only if it can be
> used to write a book on literary theory(1).
> 1 - Where book means anything similar to a recorded, transmissible and
> archivable message, literary theory is  divorced of western cultural
> imperialism, etc.

Well, that´s a clear definition, but I fail to see how it´s a good or
usefull one or what the use is of excluding languages (well, canidates, to
you) that have no written form (there are a lot of those) or that belong to
culures that for some reason aren´t so inclined towards literary theory (I
could see some solid reasons for that).

It will also immediately raise the question exactly what is literary theory
in this context while we try to sort the savages from the users of language.
"Jack´s song rhimes nicely" and "Error parsing "Exegene" in line 001;
invalid expression" could both be seen as examples of expressions that have
some aspects of literary theory", are they? Suppose we chanced uppon some
group of people that made sounds towards one another; how would we go about
comunicating with them, even if we had a interperter, if we wouldn´t yet be
sure wether they had a language at all? If I´d belong to such a group I´d
immediately claim that yes, you could write a book on language theory in my
language but no, we are not going to do it, being presently engaged in some
other activity. This would leave the poor anthropologist with the task of
trying to write or record a book equivalent in my language.

Sillyness aside, I´m not yet convinced of your proposed definition; I´d
realy like to hear some advantages of it. For sure the ability of
selfreferntailness is a important stage in culural development but is it so
important that we can claim languages that don´t have it (yet) aren´t
languages?

Yours,
Kas.



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