[Xmca-l] Re: Michael C. Corballis

Fri Nov 16 09:29:06 PST 2018

I am very interested in where this conversation is going. I remember being in a Theories of Literacy class in which Glynda Hull, the instructor, showed a video of a singing circle somewhere in the Amazon, where an incredibly complicated pattern of musical phrases wove in and out among the singers underlaid by drumming that included turn-taking, call and response, you name it. Maybe 20 people were involved, all pushing full steam ahead to create something together that they all seemed to know about but wouldn’t happen until they did it. 

Certainly someone has studied the relationship of musical communication (improvised or otherwise), speech and gesture? I have asked musicians about this and get blank looks. Yet clearly you can tell when you listen to different kinds of music, not just Amazon drum and chant circles, that there is some kind of speech - like potential embedded there. The Sonata form is clearly involves exposition (they even use that word). 

For example: the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo opens with a musical theme that says, as clearly as if we were reading aloud from some children’s book, “I am now going to tell you a very strange story that sounds impossible but I promise you every word of it is true…da-de-da-de-da.’ Only it doesn’t take that many words.

(18) Fargo (1996) - 'Fargo, North Dakota' (Opening) scene [1080] - YouTube

Helena Worthen
helenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>
Berkeley, CA 94707 510-828-2745
Blog US/ Viet Nam: 
helenaworthen.wordpress.com <http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com/>
skype: helena.worthen1

> On Nov 16, 2018, at 8:56 AM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Andy and Peter,
> I like the turn taking principle a lot. It links language and music very nicely: call and response. By voice and ear. While gesture is linked to visual art. In face-to-face conversation there is this rhythmically entrained interaction. It’s not just cooperative, it’s verbal/gestural art. Any human work is potentially a work of art. Vera John-Steiner and Holbrook Mahn have talked about how conversation can be a co-construction “at the speed of thought”.  Heady stuff taking part, or just listening to, this call and response between smart people.  And disheartening and destructive when we give up on dialog. 
>  
> As I write this, I realize that the prosodic aspects of spoken language (intonation) are gestural as well. It’s simplistic to restrict gesture to visual signals. But I would say gesture is prototypically visual, an accompaniment to the voice. In surfing the web, one can find some interesting things on paralanguage which complicate the distinction between language and gesture. I think it speaks to the embodiment of language in the senses. 
> 
> Henry
> 
> 
> 
>> On Nov 16, 2018, at 7:00 AM, Peter Feigenbaum [Staff] <pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu <mailto:pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>> wrote:
>> 
>> Andy,
>> 
>> I couldn't agree more. And thanks for introducing me to the notion of delayed gratification as a precondition for sharing and turn-taking. 
>> That's a feature I hadn't considered before in connection with speech communication. It makes sense that each participant would need
>> to exercise patience in order to wait out someone else's turn. 
>> 
>> Much obliged.
>> 
>> Peter
>> 
>> On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 8:50 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>> Interesting, Peter. 
>> Corballis, oddly in my view, places a lot of weight in so-called mirror neurons to explain perception of the intentionality of others. It seems blindingly obvious to me that cooperative       activity, specifically participating in projects in which individuals share a common not-present object, is a form of behaviour which begets the necessary perceptive abilities. I have       also long been of the view that delayed gratification, as a precondition for sharing and turn-taking, as a matter of fact, is an important aspect of sociality fostering the development of speech, and the upright gait which frees the hands for carrying food back to camp where it can be shared is important. None of which presupposes tools, only cooperation.
>> Andy
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.ethicalpolitics.org_ablunden_index.htm&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=itd0qPWlE7uAuyEX0ii8ohEoZegfdMAOOLf-YoaEqqs&s=-uwTjZDhHtJM2EFdBS-rXLTptADQdSGAcibaav-mhJw&e=>
>> On 17/11/2018 12:36 am, Peter Feigenbaum [Staff] wrote:
>>> If I might chime in to this discussion:
>>> 
>>> I submit that the key cooperative activity underlying speech communication is *turn-taking*. I don't know how that activity or rule came into being,
>>> but once it did, the activity of *exchanging* utterances became possible. And with exchange came the complementarity of speaking and
>>> listening roles, and the activity of alternating conversational roles and mental perspectives. Turn-taking is a key process in human development.
>>> 
>>> Peter
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 9:21 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>>> Oddly, Amazon delivered the book to me yesterday and I am currently on p.5. Fortunately, Corballis provides a synopsis of his book at the end, which I sneak-previewed last night.
>>> The interesting thing to me is his claim, similar to that of Merlin Donald, which goes like this. 
>>> It would be absurd to suggest that proto-humans discovered that they had this unique and wonderful vocal apparatus and decided to use it for speech. Clearly there was rudimentary language before speech was humanly possible. In development, a behaviour is always present before the physiological adaptations which facilitate it come into being. I.e, proto-humans found themselves in circumstances where it made sense to develop interpersonal, voluntary communication, and to begin with they used what they had - the ability to mime and gesture, make facial expressions and vocalisations (all of which BTW can reference non-present entities and situations) This is an activity which further produces the conditions for its own development. Eventually, over millions of years, the vocal apparatus evolved under strong selection pressure due to the practice of non-speech communication as an integral part of their evolutionary niche. In other words, rudimentary wordless speech gradually became modern speech, along with all the accompanying facial expressions and hand movements.
>>> 
>>> It just seems to me that, as you suggest, collective activity must have been a part of those conditions fostering communication (something found in our nearest evolutionary cousins who also have the elements of rudimentary speech)  - as was increasing tool-using, tool-making, tool-giving and tool-instructing.
>>> 
>>> Andy
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.ethicalpolitics.org_ablunden_index.htm&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=VlOXr8x02-mghKHGod2LwGx8_X-LHNRmDI_elI-7rKI&s=A3k5oeQ13zGCPUbWibdOb2KNZT4q__fLyCwugyULUDw&e=>
>>> On 16/11/2018 12:58 pm, Arturo Escandon wrote:
>>>> Dear Andy,
>>>> 
>>>> Michael Tomasello has made similar claims, grounding the surge of articulated language on innate co-operativism and collective activity. 
>>>> 
>>>> https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-child-language/90B84B8F3BB2D32E9FA9E2DFAF4D2BEB <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.cambridge.org_core_books_cambridge-2Dhandbook-2Dof-2Dchild-2Dlanguage_90B84B8F3BB2D32E9FA9E2DFAF4D2BEB&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=VlOXr8x02-mghKHGod2LwGx8_X-LHNRmDI_elI-7rKI&s=vxJZooXRDYwTRrM4dzWBbLfUhF9HhmUvU3ouq6sbwPI&e=>
>>>> 
>>>> Best
>>>> 
>>>> Arturo
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> Sent from Gmail Mobile
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
>>> Director, 
>>> Office of Institutional Research <https://www.fordham.edu/info/24303/institutional_research>
>>> Fordham University
>>> Thebaud Hall-202
>>> Bronx, NY 10458
>>>  
>>> Phone: (718) 817-2243
>>> Fax: (718) 817-3817
>>> email: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu <mailto:pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>
>> 
>> -- 
>> Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
>> Director, 
>> Office of Institutional Research <https://www.fordham.edu/info/24303/institutional_research>
>> Fordham University
>> Thebaud Hall-202
>> Bronx, NY 10458
>>  
>> Phone: (718) 817-2243
>> Fax: (718) 817-3817
>> email: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu <mailto:pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20181116/0cca17e8/attachment.html 