On 10 Feb 2005 at 17:45, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On 10 Feb 2005, at 5:21 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > No, grammar *enables* meaning. The switch you are making is a switch > > of meaning by changing the words. You've done nothing to change the > > *grammar*, > > Okay. This may be a terminology problem. . . .
The grammatical structure of the utterance has not been change by swapping the nouns. > . . . To me (and to linguists), > "changing the grammar" means changing the *rules* of grammar -- for > instance, changing from a Subject-Verb-Object grammar like English to > a Subject-Object-Verb language like Japanese. So there's a difference > between "changing the grammar" -- which effectively means you're > changing the language -- and making a grammatical change, like > switching the subject and object in a sentence. At other points in my reply I've explicitly used "grammatical structure" and that's what I've been discussing. You haven't altered the structure of the sentence by swapping the two nouns. > Changing "Dog bites man" to "Man bites dog" involves making a > *grammatical change* (which is *not* the same thing as "changing the > grammar"). Yes, the structure is the same -- subject-verb-object -- > because that's the kind of word order English has. But I didn't > change the content. The content -- the words -- are exactly the same. > But they fill different grammatical roles because they have a > different position in each sentence. No, from my point of view you've radically altered the content, since I use "content" to refer to "meaning." You seem to use "content" to mean "the abstract collection of words used in the sentence." > So, again: grammar determines meaning. I simply disagree. > > You are manipulating the content, not the structure. > > Again, I'm not changing the content. Content = words. . . . No, content = meaning. > . . . The words are > the same. I'm changing the structure by modifying the grammatical > function of the words "man" and "dog." No, you're simply swapping the position of two nouns, utilizing exactly the same grammatical structure. It's the swap of denotative meaning that accomplishes the change of meaning (because the change of position moves the noun into a different grammatical function). You've done nothing to alter the structure of the sentence. > I could also change the grammar without changing the word order. I > could invent some arbitrary, artificial grammar that uses all the same > English words but uses an Object-Verb-Subject order. In that > artificial grammar, "Man bites dog" would mean exactly the opposite of > what it does in good old Subject-Verb-Object English. > > So, again: grammar determines meaning. Well, in that sense, yes, it does. But this just points out a problem with the analogy between music and language -- it quickly breaks down. We were talking about physics/acoustics and music. Grammar would be an analog of musical style, rather than of physics/acoustics, and you could contrast two "grammars" of music, such as tonality and modality, and you'd find that this "grammar" does, in fact, participate in the construction of musical meaning. But physics/acoustics are neutral in regard to tonality vs. atonality, in the sense that the same elements are used to create different systems of interaction of tones (we'll leave aside, for the moment, whether or not atonality is a viable system psycho- acoustically speaking; I can't see the argument against its viability as there's plenty of non-tonal music that makes perfect sense to me, despite whatever psycho-acoustic "prejudices" might be pre-wired into my brain). Certain things can be expressed in atonality that can't be expressed in tonality, and vice versa. But both systems draw on the same pool of acoustic phenomena (though the two systems don't use all the same phenomena (atonality may avoid the octave, for instance), and they don't give them the same meaning). Physics does not determine what the perfect fifth means -- only the musical style (i.e., tonality or atonality) defines its meaning. > > No, I'm not agreeing with you at all. Your example does not > > demonstrate anything about grammatical structure, since your two > > examples are structurally indistinguishable. It is only at the level > > of denotative meaning that there is any difference, at the message > > level, not at the grammatical level. > > It is the Subject-Verb-Object word order of English that allows you to > decode the denotative meaning of "Dog bites man" and "Man bites dog." > You can't determine the meaning without processing the grammar. I agree. It's the ether through which the message is transmitted. But it doesn't play any significant part in the message, except as the encoding. I could send the same message in German, using completely different words and grammar, but the meaning of the message would be identical. > And, again, just because you don't consciously think about English > grammar and its word order rules when you speak, or read, or write, > doesn't mean it "has no significance in the *meaning* of any > particular speech or written utterance". Quite the opposite. If the meaning is independent of the encoding, how does the encoding play an important role (other than the trival substrate role) in conveying meaning? > > And that's exactly what your example shows -- the same grammatical > > structure can convey two entirely different meanings. Thus, the > > grammatical structure itself is not a controlling aspect of the > > communication -- it is the words itself that control the meaning. > > As I have said, many times, words *cannot* control the meaning because > the words in "Man bites dog" and "Dog bites man" are *exactly the > same*. . . . This is similar to saying that the "content" of a Byrd Fantasy with a key signature of one flat is the same as the "content" of Mozart's F Major Sonata, K. 332. They both use the same collection of notes (the notes of what we refer to as an F Major scale). Yet, to me, the "content" is completely unrelated. Just because the same gamut of notes is used tells you *nothing* -- indeed, all the significant musical information is in *how* those notes relate to each other (modal in one piece, tonal in another). And, to me, that's the only possible definition of "content" that has any utility, as restricting content to "the abstract collection of elements making up the expression" flattens all the foreground elements. In other words, it's a Schenckerian attitude. We could talk about Schencker, actually, because that would bring the topic back to music and the problem with it for me is that it turns the idea of musical significance upside down. > . . . In order to decode the meaning, you need to determine which > word is the subject and which word is the object, and the words > themselves don't reveal that information. Only grammar can do that. Grammar is the encoding system. It is independent of the message being sent. A message with identical meaning could be sent using a different grammar and a different collection of words (different language) and the meaning would remain unchanged. -- 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
