source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 21:28:45 -0800 Subject: subtle persistent causes From: James Kukula In his book THE SPELL OF THE SENSUOUS David Abram refers to some studies that show how languages around the world tend to use words that sound like the objects they refer to. E.g. words that refer to flowing water, like "stream", tend to sound a bit like flowing water. Abram argues that this can be explained by the fact that over the millenia languages have internal dynamics that cause them to evolve in complex ways, but the actual physical sounds of things stay constant. So this steady reference point will tend to sort of entrain the complex language system, to bring it into some kind of resonance. Similarly it doesn't seem too outlandish to argue that the pitch and rhythm structures that naturally occur could entrain the complex social dynamics of musical practise. The natural structures being fixed, over a very long time, even if they can exert only a weak force, they will tend to draw musical practise into some kind of alignment. Jim Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 21 Mar 1997 08:39 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA07599; Fri, 21 Mar 1997 08:39:16 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA07605 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id XAA01175; Thu, 20 Mar 1997 23:37:47 -0800 Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 23:37:47 -0800 Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970320233403.3f3f9380@pacificnet.net> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu