hi thank you for your evocative comments. they have made me think some, and i have tried to put my thoughts into words in the hope that they will further this discussion. i'm not sure i agree with you; but maybe i just haven't done my homework. what about arabic numbers [hopefully gw bush can't understand their arabic lineage or else mathematicians will be sent to gitmo ...], would you consider them a language? they seem to fit better your definition. or maybe it's not even your definition. [maybe it is] and do all languages need to fit the same mold? can we think of language as a huge set, in which there are many smaller subsets that don't all exhibit the same properties, but are all contained within the larger 'language' grouping? music does communicate. just read plato on the characteristics of the modes, or think about the bible belt preachers burning elvis records. there was *something* being communicted by those tones. also, in a special formation you could use music tones as a code [j = 440 ...], but that's not really what you're talking about here. On 2/13/06, Michael Gogins wrote: > Music is not a language because it does not convey propositions and, in fact, > has limited if any symbolic content. is this your formulation? > Languages are universal, each can be translated into all others, any concept > can be communicated in any language. i'm not so sure about that. i've been reading a lot of buddhism lately, and most of it is in translation. if any concept can be translated into any language, how come there are so many widely varying translations of the same text. and, while i freely admit i cannot speak or read any chinese, i have spent some time reading the taoteching. each translation i have read spends a great deal of time talking about how to translate 'tao'. and they don't all agree. so i don't think translation is as easy as you make it out to be. > Poetry has words and in fact is language, but it also has something else that > non-poetic language does not have. That something else, I think, is music. hmm ... poetry and music are related to be sure, but it's mostly regarding rhythm [although also the sequence of phonemes can also be 'musical']. > In other words poetry is language that is also music. I think this begins to get > at the difference between music and language. i think poetry is language organized in verses instead of sentences. music may or may not be relelvant here. what about conrete poetry? how is this musical? [like earle brown scores?] -- \js [ http://or8.net/~johns/ ]