On 9 Feb 2005 at 5:19, Richard Yates wrote: > > >>Do you consciously think about grammar when you speak? > > >>Is grammar significant to communication? > > >>- Darcy > > > Can someone communicate effectively without having consciously > > learned the rules of grammar specifically (as opposed to picking up > > general concepts of communication)? Certainly, children do it all > > the time! > > Whether children 'consciously' learn grammar or 'pick it up' or have > it hardwired, the point is that grammar has significance in > communication. It does not mean that it is everything, but it is > significant. Darcy's analogy is pointing out the flaw in the position > that physics has NO significance in music. (By the way, children's > speech is grammar-ridden from as soon as they string enough words > together to have a grammar).
Again, you're arguing against something I've never proposed. Physics has no necessary *musical* significance, just has grammar has no signficance in the *meaning* of any particular speech or written utterance. It may enable the encoding of meaning, and is therefore a prerequisite for the communication to be happening in the first place. But that is not the same kind of significance as I've been talking about. That kind of significance is, to me, trivial -- it's so basic as to be uninteresting in and of itself, and it doesn't have anything to do with the foreground meaning of the message being sent. Of course, it *can* have foreground significance. Some poetry plays around with the rules of grammar at a foreground level, just as Andrew has pointed out at least one piece where he claims some acoustical rules have been foregrounded by the composer. But that's only a choice a composer or writer can make, which it seems to me makes the medium into the message. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
